By Its Cover
by Gunney
Summary: Starsky and Hutch are working undercover in the public library (which is just as boring as it sounds) when Starsky meets a young lady with a familiar face.
1. Chapter 1

Starsky was humming. It was a song he'd learned at the age of three and he'd never once had trouble with the lyrics. They'd come in handy from time to time, when he was playing silly games with his mother or his brother, or finding where his seat was in the classroom, or finding the right file in a drawer full of identical manilla folders.

He'd never sung it so much though. The lyrics were starting to lose their meaning, becoming pointless sounds that had a corresponding symbol and no other purpose. He was afraid that, by the end of the week, the song would be haunting him in his sleep. Along with lines of little numbers and letters, years of unswept dust that he'd been sneezing on for a month and that horrible grimy, smell…

It was a combination of dried cat urine and stale cigarette smoke. Every once in awhile one of the books would reek of it and he'd have to fight the desire to douse the book in kerosene and light it. Starsky was no longer fond of cats, cigarettes or the people that kept them around library books.

He hated the alphabet song with a crimson passion, but couldn't very well dispense with it. How else was he going to remember that H came before I, and P before R...V before W?

And the numbers were worse. Yvonne, the mean, diminutive old woman who ran the library, squinting through outdated spectacles that perched on her nose without need for ear pieces. She had hounded him for three days, trailing behind him as he put books back on the shelves and making him take down and reshelve every book she found out of place.

It was hard! .001 came before 1.001, 2.001 before 2.100 and 2.010… He'd spent half a day trying to find the biography section and instead ended up in the vinyl records, most of the items pulled from the shelf so that he could organize them by artist the way they should have been in the first place.

Yvonne had been especially vicious about that, driving him from the section like he was an unwanted seagull.

It wasn't fair that he didn't get to work with Hutch, just because his typing speed and accuracy left much to be desired. Hutch wasn't a speed typist necessarily himself, and Starsky had begun to suspect that the woman who was in charge of the typewriter room had specifically requested Hutch because of a tendency towards blonde men.

She certainly spent enough time fawning over him, bringing him homemade cookies and cakes. The two cavorted about, cooing over type sets and ribbon types and key strokes. He'd gone in once, fed up with the smell and sneezing in the stacks, to find Hutch and Dorice nearly cheek to cheek over the open face of a magazine salivating on, of all things, pictures of fountain pens.

Pens!

Starsky had angrily slammed the door to the room shut, alarming both the patrons inside the room as well as the librarian at the front desk, before storming out of the public library all together. Hutch had found him an hour later, napping in the driver's side of the Torino, a tissue clutched in one hand prepared for the next sneeze.

That had been the first week of their odd little stakeout.

The second week Starsky made a friend.

She was cute. Reddish-brown hair in tight curls around a pale face with grass green eyes. A few inches shorter than he was, perky and a little bit liberal. She was a college student, and a writer, she said when they bumped into each other in the stacks.

"I'm in this library practically every day. I met the blonde guy Dorice can't get over. Did they hire you at the same time?" She asked one day, leaning against a shelf full of romance novels with a casual sort of grace that Starsky could only remember seeing in the movies.

"Probably." Starsky said, shrugging. "Who knows? That guy's a schmuck anyway."

The girl laughed at him, a bright sound that he couldn't help but smirk at. "Schmuck huh?" She asked.

Starsky shrugged. "Caught him and Dorice the other day drooling over typewriter fonts. The guy probably can't even set a watch alarm."

The girl flashed him a look that seemed a little dangerous and a little sexy all at the same time. "Sounds like you're jealous."

"Of blondie? Hardly." Starsky had said, then squinted hard at the spine of the book that he'd been holding for the past ten minutes and hunted for the right spot, still feeling like any wrong move would bring Yvonne raining down on him.

"Third book in from the outside." The girl said, waited for him to place his book, then winked. "Catch you around, Schmuck."

She was attractive and smart, if a little young. A pleasant reprieve before Starsky went back to his business, faking the job of library page while actually hunting through the stacks and watching the patrons for a different kind of business.

The three long, boring, dust filled days of sinus headaches and watering eyes that followed were a little brighter with Clare around. She popped in and out of the stacks every other hour, claiming the need for a break from her typewriter. They talked about movies and magazines and books and comics. She told him a little of the novel she was writing and Starsky modified a few of the more creative reports he'd given Dobey, turning the stories into a strange detective comic he claimed to be writing.

Clare ate it up, eagerly listening to each tale.

By the start of the third week Starsky was beginning to really like Clare. It'd been a struggle to stay focused on his part of the job. He and Hutch were there to catch a drug dealer and any part of his mostly underaged crew. The remote, quiet self-maintained nature of the library had turned out to be the perfect place for drug or money exchanges. The building was public access, there were multiple entrances and exits, and the place so chronically understaffed because of government cutbacks, much of the illegal activity was likely to have gone unnoticed.

Drugs and money were being exchanged via books hidden throughout the stacks, under tables or inside the working parts of the typewriters, the record players or the card catalogue. Rumors had been flying through the library staff about the increasing drug activity but none of it had been substantiated until the day a cleaning lady walked into the women's restroom to find a fifteen-year-old girl passed out on the floor, a needle still in her arm.

The ambulance arrived too late, and the girl had been declared dead at the scene. Another OD in a world full of them, but it was the first to have happened in the library. It had been enough to garner the attention of the homicide and narcotics divisions. Since the man suspected of running the ring was wanted by both departments, Starsky and Hutch had partnered up with Kline and Granger of narco.

The two homicide detectives were to work from the inside and Kline and Granger from the outside. Their goal was to see just how big the ring was, and try to take down as many of the pieces as possible, at the same time.

That meant long covers, boring hours, days stretching into weeks. Stacks of reports. After the first two days both the blonde and brunette partner had begun to whine, explaining to Dobey all the reasons why they weren't, after all, best suited for the work.

Dobey had sat in his chair, hands folded on his desk, glaring them into silence before he told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were going to stay at the public library until hell froze over, or they caught the leader of the ring and put him away with good solid evidence. Whichever came first.

Now in week 4, after almost a month of humming the ABCs and washing his hands and face until they were red and raw, Starsky was hoping that hell would freeze soon, and kept an eye on weather reports that dipped below the 50s. The only bright spot had been the oddly familiar Clare.

The problem was, he was fairly certain that Clare was onto him. She'd been dropping hints here and there, about his familiarity with the legal system despite his claim that he had no legal degree or college training.

"I read a lot." Starsky had said with a shrug, but Clare had pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.

With a shake of her head she'd said, "Nobody gets what you got out of a book. You get that kinda smarts by bein' a cop...or a criminal." She said poking Starsky's arm pointedly.

Starsky had tried to go with it, capturing the hand and pulling Clare closer to him. "You got me. I'm a criminal. I steal books from the library and give them to the poor."

"Oh!" Clare had cooed, letting herself be drawn in. "Robin Hood? How Arthurian."

What followed had been a beautiful moment during which, under any other circumstances, Starsky would have kissed her. When he didn't he could tell Clare was disappointed. She drew back claiming she had another chapter to finish. Starsky was trying to decide whether or not he could pull off asking her out on a date.

He desperately wanted to justify the risk, to both the case and his relationship with Clare, and was opening his mouth to ask, when his hand brushed against the inside of her elbow. He felt instantly the hardened scar tissue peppering her skin there and ducked his head, catching a glimpse of needle tracks. Some of them fresh.

"I got this whole cart to finish." He'd told her, a sheepish look on his face that he hoped explained the rush of red to his cheeks.

She gave him a sad, red faced look of her own then rallied admirably and turned on the hundred kilowatt smile. "And I've got the world's next great novel to finish." She said, then pecked at the side of his mouth and disappeared.

It took Starsky twice as long to finish the cart. He kept finding himself distracted by book titles.

The first had been "The Seduction Trap" by Sarah Wood. A story about a young girl with alarming maturity and a dark past. It'd been a chore, putting the Harlequin novel back on the shelf without cracking the cover. The needle tracks had turned Clare's bright future into a tragedy waiting to happen in Starsky's mind.

Worse yet, his observation of the track marks technically made her a suspect now. It was the book "The Kidney and Hypertension in Diabetes Mellitus" by Carl Mogensen that got him thinking maybe he was overreacting. He'd cracked the cover of that one, hunting through the dense index, then put it back and chose another book on the same disease, then another, until he found something about needle tracks. Insulin, or multiple hospital stays or...or any other of thousands of reasons for Clare to have used the same vein so many times.

She hadn't looked strung out, or hollow eyed and over-thin the way junkies did. She'd looked healthy and fresh faced and bright and attractive.

It was Starsky's plan to tell Hutch about it that night, and maybe try to figure out who Clare was the following morning. To that end he figured he might be able to get her last name out of her, maybe even a phone number. The part of him that wanted to save lost kittens, rescue sweet old ladies and do everything to keep innocence and wonder alive, desperately hoped that he was wrong.

The pit of his stomach and the cop senses he had, the vague characteristic that Clare had spotted early on, were telling him he'd be arresting Clare and trying to turn her against her boss, before he ever had a chance to date her.

His suspicions were heightened when he ducked into the typewriter room that same day and found it empty but for Dorice. Hutch was using the restroom she said, and Clare had left early for the day. Even Dorice seemed surprised at Clare's rapid departure.

That evening, as the librarians were closing the building down around five pm, Starsky and Hutch did their normal sweep, checking the nooks and crannies of the building for drug paraphernalia. They found a few baggies, a needle and a spoon, crooked dramatically at the handle.

Hutch found a beer can that had been cut in half, the bottom of the can tarnished by soot from a flame. They were standing outside the men's restroom bagging the evidence when Starsky cleared his throat.

"What?"

"S'nothin'."

Hutch waited, sealing the evidence bag and writing on the front of it. He'd recapped the marker before Starsky cleared his throat again. "You want a lozenge or you gonna spit it out?"

"You know Clare?"

Hutch smirked. "Yeah, nice girl. Seems to like you."

"I like her too." Starsky mumbled, distracted. "I uh...noticed some funny little scars on her arm though."

Hutch straightened almost immediately, his eyes honing in on Starsky's even in the darkness of the mostly vacated library.

"I figure maybe she's diabetic. Maybe...there's some other kinda medicine she's got to take all the time."

"She doesn't look like a junkie." Hutch said.

"No, she doesn't. She's smart, too."

"And talented, I've read some of her novel." Hutch said casually.

Starsky's eyes opened a little wider at that and he glared, a pang of jealousy hitting his empty and growling stomach. "She won't let me near it, why did you get to read it?"

"Relax, Starsk, I read some of the pages she tossed in the trash."

"What are you hunting through the trash for?"

Hutch lifted the baggie and shook it. "Needles."

"Oh."

"Did you get her last name?" Hutch asked.

"She left before I could. She told me she's a student. I figured I'd go by the university tomorrow morning, see if I can't get anywhere with a description in the registrar's office."

"Want some company?"

"I'd hate to tear you away from Dorice." Starsky snarked, following his partner through the darkened stacks, and toward the central staircase that was always locked to everyone but staff. The staircase ran the height of the building, emptying into the basement where the library had public use meeting rooms and staff offices.

"Tear me away from Dorice." Hutch said, flashing his partner a look of terror that was only partially faked.

Starsky snickered leading the way through the basement door that serviced staff only and locking the library up behind them. The exit emptied into the subterranean garage, normally only occupied by the library bookmobile at that hour. Both men slowed their steps when they spotted the dark green sedan idling a few feet from the garage entrance. The harsh, halogen lights reflected off the slanting windshield, obscuring their view of the driver, but they could plainly see the pale faced, rail thin man leaning into the car.

Starsky could also see the curly headed girl in the passenger seat. She spotted him in almost the same instant and they stared at each other for only a second before Clare leaned toward the driver. The business transaction ended abruptly, the thin man jerking toward the staircase that led to street level. The sedan squealed its tires, hastily storming out of the garage.

Starsky was in the Torino a second later, Hutch taking off on foot after the buyer. Hutch was on the street a full minute before Starsky could navigate the garage, keeping the green sedan in sight. It turned off the main drag seconds before the blonde slid into the passenger seat.

"Turned right on High Street!" He shouted, slapping the Mars light onto the roof even before he'd latched his door.

The tires spat smoke and Starsky took the first right, crossing parallel to the green sedan.

"You catch the license plate?"

Hutch already had the mic in his hand and responded with a "Zebra Three to central, Zebra Three to central, I need an APB on a green sedan, Chrysler, license plate HLO3092. Repeat Hotel Lima Oscar 3092."

The sound of Mildred responding was lost under the growl of the engine as Starsky floored the accelerator getting the car through an intersection before the light turned.

"Still see it?" Hutch asked.

"Yeah, we're keepin' pace. I'm gonna try to get ahead of 'em."

"Following from in front. Neat trick, given that we don't know who they are or where they're going?"

"One of 'em was Clare." Starsky said, his face grimly focused on the driving.

Hutch braced his hands against the dash and sat back, not sure how to respond. They crossed a few more intersections before Starsky veered to the left, drove a block then jagged to the right again.

Hutch caught sight of the Chrysler through a clutter filled alley and shouted, "We're still with 'em."

"Zebra Three, Zebra Three, your Chrysler has been spotted exceeding speed limits on West High Street. Responding officers in pursuit."

"Central, patch me in to that unit." Hutch called, then waited, watching each alley they passed.

"Chrysler's pickin' up speed." Starsky said, his voice reflecting the danger that kind of speed threatened.

"They're heading west, they've only got so many options." Hutch scanned the part of the city they were racing through, knowing that eventually the roads would thin out into suburbs and smaller bedroom communities. Parents and kids out and about on an early Friday evening. Targets for a criminal driving a speeding car, trying to evade the police.

The radio crackled a second later and a voice familiar to both popped through the speakers.

"Zebra Three this is Adam 16, go ahead."

"That you, Kyle?*" Hutch called, smirking at the thought of the once clumsy rookie who had saved his life in the halls of the Bay City 9th precinct building once.

"In the flesh, Detective Hutchinson. Wanna tell me who you've scared off this time?"

"Not really sure. But we need to get ahead of this guy. Try to cut him off before he can disappear into the housing units."

"We've got a solid tail on this guy, if those of you with a higher pay grade would like to do the- Jesus Christ!"

Both heard the terror in Kyle's voice before they heard a staticky screech that vibrated through the paneling on the doors. Then the radio went silent.

"Adam 16." Hutch called into the handset, even as he was positive they wouldn't respond.

A second later they passed the intersection that had stopped Adam 16 in its tracks, the cruiser pinned against a telephone pole by a garbage truck.

"Dispatch we need ambulance and black and whites to the corner of West High Street and Mulberry. Officers down." Hutch breathed, one hand clutching the handset, the other bracing himself against the back of the seat to keep from landing in Starsky's lap as they turned the corner onto Mulberry.

They ran three lights before Starsky slid the car into place, blocking two-thirds of Mulberry street south of the accident.

There was blood on the shattered windshield of the cruiser, specks of it somehow scattered across the hood as well. Starsky ran for the driver's side, and Officer Kyle, while Hutch checked on Kyle's newest partner, Officer Logan.

Hutch knew Logan was dead even before he got there. Necks didn't bend that way and still allow air through the windpipe. He checked for a pulse anyway and could have sworn that, for a brief second, he felt one fluttering under his fingertips. There were no breaths, however, and after Hutch had reached into the car to kill the ignition on the other side of the warped steering wheel, his second check told him he was wrong. No pulse. No breath. Officer Logan was gone.

"Starsk?"

"He's alive. He's broken up bad, but he's alive." Starsky said, then glanced up at the pale, haunted look on his partner's face. He didn't have to ask. "Check on the garbage truck driver. See if you can't back his rig up, huh?"

"Yeah." Hutch said, then ran from the car, scanning the mess of vehicles, onlookers and trash that the accident had created. He could hear more sirens in the distance and rushed to the garbage truck, yanking the driver's side door open and leaping up onto the step.

There was no driver. Hutch stepped down and stared around the crowd looking for someone with a possible head injury, wearing a Bay City Dump badge, or the distinctive gray coveralls. When he finally found his man he was astonished to see him charging toward the dump truck at full speed, completely uninjured. Hutch didn't wait.

Pulling himself up into the seat Hutch hit the warning lights, leaned on the horn and started slowly backing the dump truck away from the cruiser it had rammed, apparently, unmanned. The cruiser shook and groaned, then settled against the asphalt, bits of glass, metal and plastic falling off as the two vehicles separated. Starsky tried the driver's side door, just to prove to himself that he couldn't open it with his own strength. To his surprise it moved, groaned, held fast for a long moment, then gave, the whole door coming off its hinges.

Starsky leapt backwards, stumbling onto his ass on the pavement, but managing to avoid the door landing on him.

Hutch parked the garbage truck, set the brake and turned off the engine before he jumped down from the driver's seat and slammed the breathless garbage man against the side of the deadly vehicle.

"What's your name?"

"H-h-harry."

"Is this your truck?" Hutch demanded, jabbing the side of the bucket.

The man barely managed to swallow.

"You just killed a cop and obstructed officers in pursuit of a suspect. I'd think real hard about the consequences you're gonna deal with if you add deserting the scene of an accident to the list. Hear me?"

The man nodded, trembling, his eyes filling with tears. He was genuinely afraid, genuinely aware of what he had become responsible for...genuinely sorrowful. Hutch let him go, forcing himself to breathe twice before he gritted his teeth and said, "Sit down. Don't move."

Then he was headed for the Torino, getting out the word and watching his partner as Officer Kyle regained consciousness, launching into a world of pain that hadn't existed before.

* * *

Thanks to a review from a friend I have realized that I'm in the bad habit of referencing my own stories. For that reason, I ask that you indulge my record keeping. I will * the references that are not canon/part of the show and list the stories that are referenced here.

*The Hurt Lesson


	2. Chapter 2

"Your first big break in the case, and this has to happen…"

Starsky looked up from the square of hospital flooring he'd been staring at, catching the unhappy look on Dobey's face before the man paced away. "How were we supposed to know they'd be running a deal right there in the garage?"

"Captain, we stumbled onto it. And compared to the reports from the library staff, a deal out in the open like that was-"

"It was a set up." Kline snapped from the opposite wall. "They were watching _your_ obnoxious car, waiting to see what you would do and you fell for it…"

"Hook, line...boat." Granger blurted, gesturing toward the OR doors with the last word.

"You're so sure it was a set up, huh, Kline?" Starsky snapped.

"You're a real dummy, Starsky. I don't blame you for missing the signs."

"What signs?" Starsky asked already moving away from the wall and crossing the neutral territory that the hallway had become.

"You said yourself your girlfriend was startin' to get squirrelly. You think the average joe on the street knows what needle marks look like?"

"Where were you, huh? You were supposed to be watchin' those flop houses, one of ya, and the other one was supposed to be outside the library while it was open. Which one of you was sleepin' on the job?" Starsky accused angrily.

Hutch had stepped forward then, gently laying his hand on Starsky's shoulder and putting a little pressure there. Starsky stopped his advance and stood his ground.

Kline and Granger exchanged a long look before Granger said, "Neither one of us was on the library. We got some info about a second flop house with a lot of after school activity. We were watching it all day."

"Did you men know about that?" Dobey asked Starsky and Hutch, getting looks from his men that were verging on insubordinate. "This is supposed to be a joint task force. The four of you are supposed to be in regular communication so that the bust can happen at the same time...so that we can get all the bugs with one shoe."

"How were we supposed to know that Stanley here would scare away the rabbit the first time he saw it?" Kline snapped.

"Did you identify yourselves as police officers, at all?" Dobey asked his men, angrily ignoring the sarcasm of the two narco officers.

"Not before the car took off. There wasn't time." Starsky said. "He might've seen the Mars light and he definitely figured out there was a cruiser following him."

"That's good thinkin', Cap. We show up at the library tomorrow like everything's fine, we might be able to cover for this." Hutch said, optimistically.

"What about you two? That second flophouse. What did it turn up?"

"Nothin." Kline muttered grumpily, pushing away from the wall. He passed Starsky with only inches separating them, his glaring mug even closer. "I'm takin' a smoke break."

Granger watched his partner storm out and shook his head. He thought briefly about apologizing for the man, but he'd never once done it in their partnership, he didn't see the sense in starting now. "Flophouse turned out to be a bust. No high school kids there, just a bunch of twenty-something vagrants. We were considering shutting it down and giving a few bums a free night in jail when the call came over the radio. We jumped in the car, beat across town and found the mess on Mulberry and West High."

Dobey's face radiated displeasure, especially in the face of knowing that there was truly nothing he could do about the chain of events that cost an officer his life. Technically Granger and Kline hadn't broken any rules, just gotten sloppy with their communication. His men were simply at the wrong place at the right time, and the bad guys jumpier than usual. Hutch had made a good point, though.

If the bad guys couldn't connect the Torino with a police presence the undercover gig might still be worth pursuing. And there was no way to find out until they got back to work the next morning.

"When does the library open on Saturdays?" Dobey asked.

"9am, it closes at 5." Starsky said, morosely staring at a pastoral scene on a printed poster tacked to the wall. Kline's head had been obscuring the single structure in the otherwise nature-filled scene. It had turned out to be a tiny, disappointing shack instead of the barn Starsky had been envisioning. The metaphoric implications were endless.

"Alright. Granger, you and your partner keep up your usual, but one of you is to be next to a radio at all times."

"Tomorrow's our day off, Capt-"

"Not anymore, it's not." Dobey barked, glaring at Granger until the man put up his hands, pushed away from the wall and wandered down the hallway after his partner.

"One of you two will call in sick. Get a car from impound and find someplace to watch the library. I don't care how you do it, but I want two sets of eyes on the outside of that library, one set of eyes inside, and constant radio communication in case anything goes down. If we're blown we'll have Sunday to consider what we've collected so far before we get warrants. If we're not blown...you can join me for Sunday dinner."

A strange smile settled on Dobey's face and Starsky and Hutch exchanged a glance.

"You're inviting us to Sunday dinner?" Hutch asked.

"Why not? My kids miss you guys." Dobey said, smirking inwardly at the smile that briefly lightened Starsky's face. "For now, go home. I'll call once I know about Kyle."

Both men started to protest but Dobey put up his hands. "It doesn't take three of us to wait, and I have the feeling tomorrow is going to be a long day." He paused for a moment his face growing deadly serious. "I don't want to have to write the words "error caused by extreme fatigue" on any reports after tomorrow. Get me?"

"Got ya." Hutch said, nodding.

"Go ahead and pick up that impound tonight." Dobey said, then watched his men as they wandered reluctantly out of the hospital.

It took a few more hours for the surgeon to appear in the pale yellow hallway making Dobey glad he'd sent his men home when he did. In that time Kyle's mother, sister and girlfriend had showed up and Dobey had spent the hours alternately comforting them, and listening to their tear-filled stories about the man they clearly loved a great deal.

He told them what he could about the reason Kyle was there, and emphasized that the collision had been an accident of fates, and that the other officers involved had acted 100% to the best of their ability.

He had noticed Officer Logan's family lingering in the hallway just before the surgeon came out, and made a mental note to check on the officer's body in the morgue. He'd been avoiding thinking about the long checklist he had to tackle, the string of horrible chores he had to do with one officer gone in the line of duty. He'd been praying he wouldn't have to do it all twice.

The surgeon took a moment to scan the worried faces in the hallway, already familiar with Dobey. He asked to speak to the immediate family and at Dobey's nod, took a deep breath before addressing all four. "He's still alive. There's a lot of damage, broken bones and contusions. We're watching some hemorrhaging in his frontal lobe and there may be some brain damage. But Officer Kyle was wearing a seatbelt when the accident happened, and that probably saved his life. Wish more of my patients would." The doctor abruptly cut off his PSA, and cleared his throat. "We're going to watch him very carefully over the next 48 hours. You can see him in a few minutes but we're going to keep him sedated. It's 'watch and see' until that two-day window has passed."

Dobey stayed with Kyle's family until all but Kyle's girlfriend had gone home. On his way out of the hospital he visited Logan's body in the morgue, standing in the cold, silent space staring at the glare off the deceased officer's naked chest. The damage the dash had done to his abdomen and head was stomach turning, but Dobey stared anyway. In a few hours he would be going through Logan's file, contacting family members he'd already talked to once that day and explaining to them why they weren't able to take their son, brother, father, uncle home right away. Why they would have to wait for an autopsy before they could even consider funeral arrangements.

Then he would be talking to the dump truck driver, pooling witness testimonies and sending it all to IA where the information would get buried under the mound of shooting incidents they tended to make a priority. As if guns were the only object in the world capable of being used for death. In the end the only people, other than Dobey and the officers involved, who would care about the minute details of how Officer Logan had ended up on the slab, was the insurance companies. They would want to know how much they had to shell out to make everybody happy and stay within the confines of the law.

Money...drugs….lust...all things that men would kill for.

Dobey said a prayer for Logan's family. A prayer for Kyle. A prayer for his men. He swept his hand over his forehead and chest, making the sacred sign he'd made since his catechism as a young boy before he finally left the dead to the dead and rejoined the land of the desperately living.

* * *

After getting the car, a '66 GTO convertible that was more rust and dents than muscle car, Starsky and Hutch had spent a scant 10 minutes discussing who would call off and who would remain in the library. By the time they arrived at Hutch's apartment both had agreed that it was more likely that Starsky's cover was in question now, as compared to Hutch. Both agreed that Hutch was more likely to be missed than Starsky.

"If she asks why we were the last two to leave the library?" Starsky asked, thinking of Clare, presuming she would show up the next day, if for no other reason than to confirm or deny suspicions.

Hutch considered for a moment, standing at his stove, the handle of a skillet in one hand, tongs in the other. "You'd offered me a ride." Hutch said, glancing over his shoulder to watch Starsky shrug.

They were silent for a few minutes the sizzle of the food on the stove taking over. Starsky studied the bubbles of carbonate rising to the top of his beer then said, "I think you should wear a wire."

Hutch immediately laughed and shook his head but Starsky interrupted the sound. "I'm serious, Hutch. Maybe it's Logan being killed, maybe it's just...maybe its just this job. But I got a feeling."

Hutch thought about it, chasing the frying vegetables around the pan until he'd flipped them all. "It's a little late to get a radio pack from the precinct tonight."

"We got those portable radios we used to carry. Probably need new batteries but we got 'em."

"How am I going to explain carrying that thing around all day?"

"Put it in your pants." Starsky mumbled into the neck of his beer bottle, then swallowed some beer and said, "Dorice will be so excited."

"Ha! You've got a dirty mind, Starsk."

"Minnie told me once that I was a trashy boy." Starsky said, almost sounding proud of the achievement.

Hutch thought about Minnie, the sister/mother she had become to he and his partner. He thought about the killer that had tried to hold her hostage to get at Hutch and Starsky*. That had been the same incident that had led to Kyle saving his life.

Kyle who was struggling to preserve his own life now.

He understood why Starsky said he had a feeling. A garbage truck randomly losing its brakes, rolling from where it had been parked on a hill and pinning a speeding cop car to a telephone pole had almost been too much to believe. Yet witnesses corroborated the city employee's story. Hutch had the feeling an investigation of the wear and tear on the brakes would confirm that the truck simply hadn't been properly maintained.

"I never thought I'd wish a terrible disease on a person." Starsky interrupted Hutch's meandering thoughts.

"Who are you plannin' on cursing there, Starsk?" Hutch asked, taking the pan from the burner and dumping the contents into a serving dish before he bent to check on the meat in the oven.

"I mean Clare. I want...I want her to have anything in the world wrong with her...as long as it means she's no hype."

Hutch brought the vegetables to the table, grabbed up the beer Starsky had opened for him and swallowed a good deal of it in one go. It'd been that kind of day. After the burn disappeared down his throat Hutch sighed and said, "Why are you so hung up on her? I know she's attractive but.."

Starsky winced a little and picked up his fork, stabbing one of the still steaming vegetables, blowing on it before he took a tentative bite. "You remember Sharman Crane?"

It took him a minute of searching back to place the familiar name with a face. When he finally had a mental image of the former model turned alcoholic that Starsky had nursed back to sobriety, Hutch nodded. Then he took in a breath and nodded again, realizing where his partner was going with the name.

"She's talented, she's going places you know...I can't...I can't understand throwin' all that away just to jab a needle up your arm."

Hutch pulled the rest of their meal out of the oven and watched it steam for moment. He not only remembered Sharman Crane but he remembered the mother-henning mess the woman had turned his partner into. He'd risked losing his badge, completely focused on redeeming a woman who had intentionally thrown or pushed away anything she had going for her.

Hutch brought the food to the table, noting that his partner had already eaten a quarter of the vegetables, one forkful at a time. He decided he would be there to yank Starsky back from the pit, if needs be, but he wasn't going to do it gently this time. Like Starsky's feeling about the work they would be doing the next day, Hutch had a feeling about Clare.

He saw her, more and more, like a black widow spider. A deadly pest that he wasn't going to mess around with if the crap hit the fan.

* * *

The following morning Hutch showed up for work at 8 am and walked with Yvonne, Dorice and some of the other ladies into the staff door as if nothing had happened the night before. Starsky watched his partner from the street across from the garage entrance, not too happy with how long he'd been sitting in the GTO.

Getting a spot on the street, so close to city hall, the courthouse and a hundred other main street attractions, was an iffy situation. He hadn't had a choice but to sleep most of the night in the car, moving from meter to meter every hour until the sun came up.

Hutch had offered to join him of course, but Starsky could see the desperate question in his eyes. He'd done the right thing, he told himself as he winced at a pulled muscle and squirmed in the lumpy seat. At least one of them looked rested.

Starsky had also brought his camera with him and snapped a few pictures of the sun rising through the buildings of downtown. The Saturday morning traffic was light, most of the citizens enjoying their first day off of the week and recovering from the hangovers that a Friday night blowout inevitably caused.

For the most part it was boring. Starsky was tired. He was also determined not to let a month of boring, tiring days go to waste and did everything in his power to stay alert.

For the first four hours the only interesting occurrence was a visit from a black and white. Starsky's head had jerked up and he'd almost toggled the radio, breaking the agreed upon radio silence, when the cruiser hit its siren. They'd been slowing to check out the car and driver that had been reported as lurking near the library most of the morning, but a call from dispatch must have dissuaded them.

They did a drive by, staring at Starsky curiously but not making anymore of an effort to stop.

Then…

Tedium

He left the car only long enough to pee and around lunch time Hutch came out of the library, scanned the street, then joined him in the GTO.

Over the sandwiches they'd packed they talked about the great, giant nothing that had happened so far.

"Clare show?"

"Sure. She's in there." Hutch said, around a mouthful of bean sprouts. " Typing away at the keys like nothing happened."

"She talk to ya?"

Hutch shrugged. "No more than usual."

Hutch watched his partner as he grew silent for a minute, desperately trying to control the 2-year-old like squirm, his sandwich forgotten in his hand. He smiled when Starsky tried to casually ask, "Did she say anything about me?"

The blonde shook his head. "Hate to say it, pal, but that's a good thing. The less she associates you with me, the more likely our cover is still intact."

Hutch was right, but it didn't make Starsky feel any better about being essentially forgotten.

"Any new thoughts on who Clare's chauffeur could'a been?" Hutch asked, finishing his food and eyeing the clock.

"Green sedan was stolen and none of the other cruisers caught sight of the car after the crash. We don't keep these covers we're gonna-hey!"

"Hey what?"

Starsky pointed at the intersection in front of them. "Cometh the thin man." He said, and Hutch zeroed in on the buyer he'd chased out of the garage the night before.

The long-haired blonde was twitching, walking with a rolling gate that was hampered by almost constant muscle spasms. It made him look like the scarecrow from the oz movie, only worse.

"Looks like we interrupted an important fix purchase last night."

"What do you think?" Starsky asked, letting Hutch figure out the unspoken aspects to the question.

They sat for a second watching the man roll toward the garage entrance, scan the street with an uneven sweep of his head, then disappear down the short ramp. Hutch glanced at the clock then gathered the trash from his lunch and said, "I'll play curious employee getting back from lunch and see how it goes."

"Still got your radio?"

"I left it in the typewriter room."

"I'm comin' with ya."

"Starsky it's gonna be-"

"Hutch...I got a feelin'." Starsky said, staring at the empty garage ramp. When he looked back at his flaxen haired, blue eyed partner the man pursed his lips and gave in.

They stepped out of the car together and Hutch casually crossed the street while Starsky ran up the block to the crosswalk and crossed there. They narrowed in on the ramp from opposite directions, Starsky's hands itching to pull his gun, but forcing himself to relax.

Hutch went into the garage first, Starsky standing just out of sight against the small bit of concrete wall between the entrance and a planter. He heard the faint echo of humming coming from somewhere in the mostly empty space, then the sound was interrupted and the Thin Man said, "Hey, hey man. I like your jacket."

"Thanks." Hutch said, playing the awkward encounter to a tee. Starsky leaned his head toward the door, catching a glimpse of the two standing a few feet from each other before he leaned back again. "Gotta go to work, man." Hutch said a minute later.

"Yeah, yeah...hey. Don't I know you from…"

"Been in the library?" Hutch asked, and Starsky could hear the polite smile in Hutch's voice.

"Oh you...yeah, you work there." Thin Man said. "You work there. Hey...uh...change? You got, you got spare change or something?"

Hutch was quiet for a moment then Starsky heard the faint shuffle of his sneakers on the garage floor. "I can give you something, but you should know this is state property...you can't panhandle here."

"Who's panning? I'm not panning...just...you know. Need a little bus fare. A little somethin' for a cup of coffee y'know."

It would be like Hutch to give the man a buck, Starsky knew, and he glanced around the corner again only to catch sight of dark green paneling rushing toward his left side. The sedan came at the ramp faster than it should have and Starsky had no direction to run in but at the approaching car.

He had managed to hit the hood running, climbing over the sedan before it hit the brakes. The sudden stop threw him off balance and his foot slipped. He tilted off the roof of the car and felt the impact of his head on the concrete before anything else.

His vision blurred and the world sounded like it was underwater. Starsky felt everything around him as if through several layers of blanket. Hands dragged him upright and into the garage.

Hutch tried to save him, striking out against the Thin Man with a hard right before he went for the guy on Starsky's left.

The woosy brunette tried to help, turning into the man on his right and driving him back and into a support column. He'd even landed a few blows into the guy's stomach before clenched fists came down on the back of his neck. Pain exploded, bursting into his head and racing down his spine and Starsky caught a right cross, full in the jaw that he hoped hurt the other guy as much as it hurt him.

He was on his elbows and his knees, scrabbling for his gun when Thin Man's reedy, trembling voice screeched into the garage. "I gotta knife man. I'm gonna cut him!"

Starsky couldn't figure out who was going to get cut and who was doing the cutting. He couldn't figure out who was supposed to be backing down and who the bad guys were. His whole world was a mess of colors and sounds that churned his stomach and made him gag on the sandwich he'd only barely finished.

An unexpected kick dug into his gut and he tasted partially digested peanut butter.

"Leave him alone!" Hutch shouted, the demand echoing menacingly through the empty garage.

Then they both heard the new voice. Clare's voice. She sounded cold and mean and nothing at all like the perky, cheery curly top she'd been in the stacks. "Stick him a little, Pete. Not too deep."

Hutch let out a muted gasp of pain and Starsky dragged in a desperate breath, sitting back on his knees and wrapping an arm around his stomach. He felt drunk, sick as a dog, and wasn't sure if breathing wasn't making things worse for him.

"Everybody calm, now?" Clare said with dulled sarcasm. "Willy...go move the car off the ramp."

"What are we gonna do with these guys?" Willy asked, his voice a deep basso that belonged to a boss's number one henchman. The odd thing was that the boss was a lady.

Clare didn't respond and Starsky, eyes watering, finally managed to lift his head and meet her eyes. She was staring down at him, her face a mask of cold, calculating, featureless business. He couldn't put the two girls together, the Clare that he met in the stacks, and the Clare that had just ordered a man to stab his partner.

Starsky worked his jaw, wincing at the swelling but fairly certain nothing was broken. His head on the other hand...he couldn't lift it any higher without the world doing the tilt-a-whirl again.

"Get up."

"Can't."

Clare shuffled closer and Hutch watched her draw a foot back again.

"Hey! If he can't get up, he can't. Kicking him won't make it happen faster." Hutch blurted as fast and as loud as he could. "Let me help him up."

Clare considered for a short moment then nodded and Hutch pulled away from "Pete". He took a second to swipe his hand back toward the subtle pain just below his bottom rib, came back with a little blood smeared on his fingers, then bent to his partner.

"Can't get up, Hutch. Can't." Starsky whispered, his fingers digging into the sleeves of Hutch's jacket once his arms were in reach.

"You gotta try, buddy."

"What the hell's goin' on?" Starsky whined, swallowing and panting as Hutch forced him to his feet.

Hutch was quiet at first, scanning the empty garage as Willy parked the sedan inches from Clare's wide spread legs and stepped out.

"There's a fan somewhere…" He muttered finally, almost completely supporting Starsky's weight. "Spreading manure all over the place."


	3. Chapter 3

"You're cops." Clare said, her teeth together tightly as she considered the statement. "You're a cop, and you're a cop." She said, pointing to each of the partners in turn. "You were cute, I mean. The whole comic book routine, the flirting. Really nice." Clare shook her head. "But not quite as good as blondie here."

Starsky wasn't totally with it. His mind was swimming and the pain coming from just behind his right ear was starting to grow, throbbing sharply with his heartbeat. He knew that admitting to being a cop was bad, and figured making a statement in the other direction would help.

"We're not cops." He got out, then felt Hutch slip his arm around his left side, and let his head fall back against his brother's shoulder. "L-librarians."

Clare snorted at that one and Willy and the third man with her entourage joined her. "Librarians. God...David, I'm a writer. I know what fiction looks like. Librarians!? You've practically got a badge-shaped imprint on your back pocket."

"She doesn't believe ya, Starsk." Hutch said.

"Starsky! Yes...goddamn that's the name. I've been trying to remember for days. Starsky!" Clare said an angry, horrible glint coming into her eyes. "It's the hair, Willy. A man can change his beard or his pants or his mind, but they ever so rarely think about their hair."

Hutch could feel Starsky slowly taking on more of his own weight. The spasms from his diaphragm were slowing, and his breathing was evening out.

"A puffball like that is hard to forget. I don't remember you being so handsome though." Clare continued, looking over Starsky like he were a horse she'd passed over once before.

The strange thing about the whole situation was that not a single gun had come out yet. Pete had a knife but one glance had told Hutch that it wasn't more than a switch blade. There might have been small revolvers tucked under the armpits of the other two goons but they hadn't pulled them.

Clare, as far as he could tell, was unarmed.

Hutch took a breath through his nose then started Starsky toward the ramp.

"Don't think so, sweetheart." Clare said, her voice galvanizing her men into action. Hutch didn't stop walking until he didn't have a choice. He stepped around Willy then came face to face with the third man.

"Got a plan, Turkey? A good one? Gonna cut me down?" Hutch asked, beyond irritated with the melodrama Clare seemed to thrive on. The third man didn't respond to the taunt, only standing in the way, watching Clare over Hutch's shoulder.

Starsky was standing mostly on his own now, one hand still clutching Hutch's forearm. He was swaying a little but he seemed more coherent. He was the one to take them back in the other direction, dragging Hutch with him until they were both moving for the staff entrance to the library.

Clare did nothing to stop them, watching them all the way to the door before Hutch unlocked it and they disappeared inside. The door swung closed, latched and Hutch stared at it stunned.

"What the hell was that?" Starsky asked, his head sinking into his hands.

"No idea. I don't like it though." Hutch reached behind him and felt for the spot of blood again, his finger tips coming away clean. "How's your head?"

"Lumpier than it used to be." Starsky said, the headache raging but most of the dizziness gone.

"You feel a little like cattle hiding from the butcher in the slaughterhouse?" Hutch asked and Starsky gave him a bleary look.

"If by that do you mean we are clueless and probably deadmeat, yes.."

"Maybe not clueless.." Hutch said, then looked to his partner. "She knew you…"

"She knew my hair."

"Starsky, you've got a history with this girl. Subconsciously you've been unable to let her go all this time, think back."

Starksy's face scrunched into a reluctant grimace and he closed his eyes. His headache flared the minute he tried to turn time back and he groaned softly.

"She didn't recognize you, so it had to have been before we were partners."

"Or maybe a job you worked on while I was…" Hutch trailed off, trying not to remember the inordinately long list of times he'd been hospitalized over the years.

Starsky snorted, once more turning back the clock, but Clare's face snapped into place so quickly he jolted to his feet. His hands lashed out and he grabbed handfuls of Hutch's jacket, eyes wide and staring into space. "Meredith. When...when you were shot by that kid and Dobey partnered me with Meredith...Clare she was...she was one of the kids. One of the kids in that dive."

Starsky's head protested his sudden move and Hutch put his hands up, stabilizing his partner, suddenly more concerned about the head injury. Starsky's eyes hadn't seemed sluggish before, but now they were closed and Hutch moved them from the narrow breezeway and into the main hallway of the basement. The long narrow stretch of carpet was bordered on both sides by doors that led to offices, community-use rooms and bathrooms.

"You sure about that?" He asked his partner, guiding him to the men's restroom where he propped the brunette against the counter and ran some water over a hand towel.

"Yeah…" Starsky said, one of his hands up, clinging to the top of a toilet cubicle wall, the other cradling his forehead. "But her name wasn't Clare. I think she was goin' by...Jem or Diamond or something like that."

Hutch put the wet cloth in Starsky's hand and watched his partner bath his own face with it, before he reached back to the part of his head that hurt the most. The wet cloth came back minus blood and Starsky put it over the lump, the relative cool of the water helping a little.

"It doesn't make sense." Hutch said, pacing in the tiny space between the sink and the opposite wall. "She knows, or she thinks she knows, that we're cops. If she saw us in the parking garage-"

"She saw us." Starsky said, eyes trained on his partner's pacing shoes wishing he'd stand still so that he could orient.

"If that was a drug deal going down she probably assumes we're onto her."

"Wouldn't most drug runners just move along? Trying to squash me against a concrete wall seems a little dramatic."

"None of them had guns." Hutch said, shrugging a little too flippantly for Starsky's taste. "Maybe they had to think on their feet."

Starsky gave his partner a baleful glare without moving his head too much. Hutch smirked a little then turned to pace again and Starsky caught sight of the small patch of blood on his back. As Hutch paced closer to him again, he grabbed a sleeve, turned his partner, then yanked the shirt up.

"You got a hole in your shirt." He said, satisfied that the stab wound, while still a stab wound, wasn't going to kill his partner.

Hutch carefully laid his shirt back over the wound, and leaned against the toilet cubicle, crossing his arms. "This...that, in the garage, it was unplanned. She let us go because she couldn't do anything else, and she knew it."

"What's she gonna do, wait outside the library for us?"

"What else do you remember about her?"

Starsky shrugged, pulled the towel from his head and rung the water from it, before he made the 2 point shot to the wash hamper. "Nothin'. She stood out because she was...she was one of the few white kids in that neighborhood. She was a lot younger, scrappy. Scared." Starsky met his partner's eyes. "Really scared. That's why I remember her, she was crying when they put her in the cruiser to take her downtown. The rest of the kids were angry, defiant, takin' out their fear by abusin' the uniforms. Clare...or...whatever the hell her name was, she was cryin'."

"We need to figure out who she is and pull her file." Hutch said.

Starsky pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and took a few experimental steps before he said, "You have fun with R&I...I'm goin' home."

"Hospital."

"What?"

"You pronounced it wrong, Starsk. The word is hospital."

"Funny guy. You know you got blood on your shirt?"

* * *

Clare and her goons had left within an hour of the confrontation. Starsky and Hutch had made a circuit of the rooms on the basement floor, most of them empty on a Saturday, checking the basement windows for any sign of Clare or the green sedan on the streets.

When they got out to the GTO they found it with its tires slashed and the headlights busted, but there were no bombs or booby traps. The amateur hour payback felt familiar to them, both partners separately thinking back to a briefly lived relationship of Hutch's. They ordered a tow truck for the car then caught public transport to the hospital and home again.

Starsky had a concussion and a bruised jaw, Hutch had a small hole in his back and a contusion the size of a cantaloupe. Both were told to rest and given the night and the next day off by Dobey. Hutch had gone out, after settling Starsky on the brunette's couch, to grab food and the files from the long ago job, briefly bringing Dobey up to speed and promising to meet the man the following evening at his family's home for dinner.

That night, in between shaking Starsky awake every few hours, Hutch immersed himself in a case that he had only been vaguely familiar with before. When he finally found Clare her name was Jewell. Six years ago she'd been seventeen, a runaway from somewhere in Indiana. Her file was brief. No listed family, no home address, no school record, no previous charges on her criminal record. There was a name of a town that may have been her birthplace in the mid-west but the rest was a blank.

Her criminal record had one charge in it, a misdemeanor for truancy as a result of the bust Starsky and Meredith had made. They had nothing else on her because so far as Bay City was concerned, Jewell/Clare hadn't existed before that day.

Before it got too late Hutch picked up the phone and worked his way through a dozen switchboards finally reaching the police department in Columbus, Indiana. He spent another ten minutes transferring from desk to desk before he reached a sergeant willing to pick up a phone on a Saturday night.

"Bay City, Cali-freakin'-fornia!" The man drawled, whistling sharply into the phone. "It's probably..what...five o'clock out there? Sunny, warm? Rainin' like shit here. And it's almost eight-thirty, what the hell can I do for ya, Sergeant Huffinson."

Ken stopped himself from correcting the man, not interested in taking yet more time to get answers. "I'm calling about a former resident, a runaway girl that might have disappeared from there as far back as six or eight years ago."

"Got a name?"

"Clare or Jewell."

"How 'bout a last name?"

"No."

There was an overly-dramatic pause. "Was that a "no" there, Huffinson?"

"I haven't got much." Hutch said, struggling to keep the irritation and the ache in his back from coming through. "She was arrested six years back for truancy. It was all the department could put on her. She'd been part of a theft ring."

"Part of a theft ring, but you got her on skippin' school.." The man muttered with a patronizing tone and Hutch could hear the flutter of papers in the background. "How about a description?"

"Uh...r-reddish brown hair, curly. Green eyes. A little under five foot. Smart." Crazy.

"Nope." The man said almost immediately. "Doesn't ring a bell for me. But then I've only been in missing persons for the past three years."

The phone line went silent for a second and Hutch stared at the throw rug on Starsky's living room floor, stunned. He tried counting to ten before he responded but only got to three before he grit his teeth and dragged out, "Do you think you could check your records? Or...I don't know, _ask someone else!?_ "

"That sure is the thing about California people, ain't it. Always wantin' things right away. Never time to chit chat. You'da took longer bookin' her, you might'a had more on your Jewell alias Clare than a slap on the wrist and a vague description."

Hutch wanted to slam the phone down but he didn't. The call had taken too long, and would be too expensive, to end prematurely. To that end, he had every intention of finding a way to get a receipt for the call and have the department pay for it, but he flashed his sleeping partner a guilty look, hoping he could intercept the phone bill before Starsky saw it.

"Sergeant Wainwright, I have reason to believe that Clare-"

"Slash Jewell, slash who-the-hell-else-knows-"

Wainwright had muttered it under his breath but Hutch was wishing the latest big science fiction craze was real. He could use the "force" and choke Wainwright into silence so that he could finish his sentence. If only…

"A kid is dead, Sergeant. OD'd in a public library. They're using the library to exchange drugs. The more we know about Clare, the sooner we can arrest her. Hell...maybe she's got a record there, and your chief will want her back to do time-"

"Ha! A juvie record? Ain't no way we'd want her back-"

"Just check your records. Call Bay City PD as soon as you have something." Hutch said then went to slam the phone down hard on the bakelite cradle. He pulled back a few seconds before impact though and pulled the receiver back to his ear before he calmly forced out a thank you. Then he slammed the phone down. The _bang_ and chime that followed woke his partner with a jerk, and Starsky's eyes opened a fraction of an inch, blue slits focusing on the red-faced blonde.

"S'matter…?"

"I'm beginning to dislike Indiana."

Starsky blinked at him, the pain his head slowly registering on his face before he said, "Huh?"

Hutch slumped back with a wince into the giant wicker chair he'd pulled over to the coffee table and sighed. "Never mind." He studied the brunette head to foot and asked, "Need anything?"

Starsky blinked some more, his mind sluggishly catching up with the shot of adrenaline that the banging of the phone had caused. "Um...pills, ice cream, shower, update and you outta my living room, in that order."

"I can handle everything but the last part."

"Hutch, I'm fine. Jus' a lil' headache."

"Just a little cracked skull more like."

Starsky sighed, rolling carefully onto his back before he sank his fingers into the cushion on the back of the couch and pulled himself upright. His head throbbed, his stomach swam, but the dizziness didn't last as long and he could control his stomach a little faster.

"The least you could do is take your stab wound and your phone calls into the bedroom."

"Yeah...where are you gonna sleep?"

Bleary eyed, Starsky looked pointedly around him. "I like it here. I got my puke bucket, I got the record player, I got my…couch."

"Still want ice cream?"

Starsky thought about it, testing the state of his stomach with a deep breath before he nodded. "Yep."

"Still want a shower?"

"Yep."

"Update?"

"Yep."

"I'll handle A, you handle B, we'll meet in the middle on C."

"Then you take D and the rest of the damn alphabet with ya to bed." Starsky groused, so sick of letters he hoped the concussion would wipe them from his working memory. He managed his feet, swaying only a little, and took himself to his bedroom for some clothes before he wandered into the shower. He felt a hundred percent better after the pound of hot water and clean PJs.

Better still a bowl of ice cream and a glass of water awaited him by the couch along with his partner, fast asleep with melting cream perched in his lap. Starsky smirked, rescued the ice cream putting it, bowl and all, into his freezer. He woke his partner with the feathery tip of a decorative plume that normally sat by the front door, taking delight in the half-hearted swats at the irritation, then directed Hutch to his bedroom using the feather like a marshalling wand.

Hutch pointed half-heartedly at the collection of pills he'd set by Starsky's glass then stumbled into the bedroom, kicking his shoes off along the way. Starsky made sure at least one of the blankets covered his partner before he turned out the lights and listened to the immediate onset of a snore. He ate ice cream and read up on the almost nothing that existed on Clare, noted the list of phone numbers Hutch had written down, probably in trying to get Columbus, Indiana on the horn.

Then he checked his watch and picked up the phone. It took him a few hours, three cups of water, a bathroom trip and a brief nap, but by the time Starsky checked that his front door was secured and turned out all the lights he'd added to Hutch's notes by about six pages.

For every juvenile name listed on the arrest report from six years ago he now had an updated history and current address. He'd been able to reach eight of them and, on another sheet of paper, had jotted down notes concerning what they remembered about the oddball, white chick that had only recently joined their organization.

There were three things that most of them agreed on:

Jewell was smart, a lot smarter than most of them, and all of them had known it, including Bruce.

Jewell had a destructive temper and mood swings that rivaled the most spoiled of starlets.

Jewell was a liar, or so they had all assumed given the outlandish crimes she had tried to lay claim to.

The last part struck Starsky as the most interesting and he fell asleep trying not to think about it. Trying not to envision Clare/Jewell as the Lizzie Borden of southern Indiana.


	4. Chapter 4

The phone woke him up.

If it were possible to have arthritis in one's head, Starsky would have sworn he had it, and donated his head to medical science to prove it. He felt achy and stiff and wished for a massage to work the kinks out of the muscles around his skull. He sat up, listening to the phone as it rang and rang and rang, hoping someone would make it stop.

When no one did he picked up the receiver and mumbled a greeting.

"Mr. Starksy, this is D-dorice, at the public library."

"Um…"

"I'm sorry to wake you. I tried calling your partner but he wasn't home, and I called your precinct and they gave me this number. Its...one of our typewriters.."

Starsky searched his living room for a clock, struggling to focus on the two tiny little sticks. It might have been 11:30, or 4:45 for all he could tell. "Um…"

"It's missing...it's been stolen."

"So..call the police."

"I-"

"No...what I mean is, call a black and white...you know, Dorice. Hutch and I are uh….busy."

Dorice sighed softly into the phone, disappointed, if not devastated. Starsky imagined the woman might have been elated to find a typewriter missing when she first realized it might bring her favorite blonde back. He hated to be the one to blow her day.

"Look...call the police, fill out the report, and if Hutch or I come across anything I'll ask my partner to drop by the library and fill you in, huh?"

"Ok." Dorice said so softly that Starsky wasn't sure he'd heard it. "What do you want us to do with the needles we found?"

Starsky rubbed his forehead hard, a sudden flare of pain coinciding with a rise in blood pressure as Dorice finally got around to the important stuff she should've led with. "You found needles?"

"Y-yesterday, but Hutch disappeared and you called in sick.."

"We'll be by to pick 'em up just...leave 'em at the front desk, huh?"

"Both of you?"

Starsky smirked, despite his headache and sighed through his nose. "Yeah...I'll ask him to come along."

"Thanks." Dorice said, then hung up.

The floorboards creaked behind him and Starsky let his head fall back against the cushions, "You're a real heartbreaker, Hutch."

"Yeah? Which one of my ex-s was that?" Hutch asked, moving with a stiff limp, one hand pressed against his lower back.

"Dorice. She wants you to visit today, help her find a lost typewriter." Starsky got to his feet, picking up his dishes as he rose so that he wouldn't have to bend over to get them. He shuffled into the kitchen, dumping them in the sink before he popped bagels into his toaster, running on automatic. Coffee came next.

"Can I get a shower first?" Hutch muttered, grumpily, then disappeared into the bathroom. By the time he was out again, wearing a clean pair of jeans that Starsky didn't remember him getting, the coffee was done, his bagel half eaten, and another one for Hutch browning in the toaster.

Hutch was moving a little easier as he crossed to the kitchen a gauze pad, medical tape, iodine and antibiotic cream in hand. He pulled one of the kitchen chairs out, sat in it backwards and did what he could to relax while Starsky applied rudimentary first aid to the wound. He felt like Starsky might have used more tape than was necessary but chose not to complain.

A cup of coffee appeared at his elbow before he could get up again and Hutch decided to stay for a bit sipping the life giving caffeine.

Starsky munched on his bagel waiting for the light to come on in Hutch's brain before he tried to talk business with him. When it did, he explained the follow up work he'd done the previous night.

"Did you try calling Indiana again?"

"No. Dorice's phone call woke me."

"If you get the urge, I wouldn't bother. You'll probably get Sergeant "Dudley" Wainright, who won't care and won't want to know either." Hutch groused bitterly.

Starsk grinned. "That why you tried to break my phone last night?"

Hutch groaned into his cup and closed his eyes, trying to wipe the whole of Indiana from his mind.

"Unfortunately we may not have a choice." Starsky continued. "Wainright, or not, Columbus, Indiana records are our best bet if we're gonna keep this case going."

"In the meantime we have lonely librarians calling at all hours of the morning."

"It's almost noon."

"Well…" Hutch leaned back in his chair, rolled his eyes, then winced and went back to his coffee.

"She said they found some paraphernalia."

"This morning?"

"Last night." Starsky said.

"Until they find a body it wouldn't be wise for us to be seen there again." Hutch said into his mug.

Starsky considered that, getting up to rescue his partner's bagel. It wasn't too burnt, and like his mother had always done in the past, Starsky scraped the black bits off into the sink. "If you use enough cream cheese you won't taste the charcoal."

Hutch looked a little crestfallen at the darkened lump he was being served and pushed it back towards his partner who shrugged and started slathering it with spread.

"So wadda you wanna do?" Starsky asked, mouth full of passable breakfast.

"Find something edible?"

"After that?" Starsky asked.

Hutch sighed, wishing he could go back to bed. The problem was Starsky was like a dog that needed walked four times a day. He was more energetic than he should've been and Hutch knew that if he went back to bed, his partner would get into trouble, and the blonde wasn't interested in the guilt that would follow.

"Why don't we run by the hospital? Check on Kyle. Then we'll go by the precinct and see if Indiana hasn't called."

"Okay. What about your chest?"

Hutch glanced down. "What about my chest?"

"It's showing."

"Oh. Lend me one of your shirts."

"Are you gonna bleed on it?"

Hutch made a hurt face, then stood with exaggerated, wounded pride and limped to the bedroom where he picked up his blood stained shirt from the day before. He sniffed it, wincing at the stink of sweat and the stiffness of the dried blood on the back.

"Here...I'll make you a deal." Starsky called, putting down his second bagel reluctantly before he started into his bedroom.

"Yeah, what?"

"You can _have_ one of my shirts, to keep, but you have to buy me lunch."

"You're gonna give me a two-dollar shirt and I'm gonna buy you a ten dollar burger, is that it?"

Starsky's eyes widened in total innocence and he shook his head. "Nah, Hutch, even-Steven. Five dollar shirt, five dollar lunch."

"I know what you make, I find it hard to believe you own a five dollar shirt."

To Hutch's shock Starsky not only produced a five dollar shirt that looked like a five dollar shirt, but that he could prove was a five dollar shirt. It came conspicuously wrapped in happy birthday paper that might have been a few months old.

After Hutch opened the package, admired that the shirt was actually very much his style, and tried it on to find it was a perfect fit, he turned to find Starsky grinning at him.

"You remember that time when you had a birthday but I didn't get you anything because we crashed a bus off a cliff?" **

"You bought me a shirt for my birthday?"

"Ha, no. I bought you tickets to a wrestling match, but the match was in Vegas and we missed it. This is your backup birthday present."

"Were you saving it for next year?"

Starsky grinned. "Or Christmas. Come on, Hutch, I can't waste a perfectly good shirt, my mother would kill me. Happy belated."

"I love it, Starsk. Promise not to bleed on it."

"I'll hold you to that." Starsky said, a level of sincerity entering his tone that brought Hutch's eyes back to his partner's.

"How much did the tickets cost?"

"Why?" Starsky asked turning to his dresser for clothes of his own.

"I'll make up for it...by paying your phone bill."

"My phone-"

Hutch winced and ducked out of the bedroom, trying to ignore the glare that had landed on his back while he finished his coffee.

* * *

Their visit to Kyle was brief. The officer was asleep, in a medically induced coma to keep him from moving around. The nurses couldn't tell them much and the surgeon was in the OR.

The precinct on a Sunday produced the same problem. No calls, no word and for the most part no one there to take a message either.

With another six hours to kill before they were due at Captain Dobey's place, they reluctantly decided that a trip to the library would be prudent. The streets around the library were surprisingly deserted, but then they'd never worked a Sunday before either.

As Hutch pulled himself out from behind the wheel he sensed a lack of movement on the other side of the car and ducked his head down under the failing liner. "Somethin' wrong with your legs."

Starsky had a peaceful smile on his bruised face, his eyes closed practically dozing. "Dorice asked specifically for you. If it's the last time we work in there, the least you could do is say goodbye."

Hutch groaned, felt for his gun in its holster, then straightened his jacket across his shoulders like a man going into battle. He heard his partner giggle softly from inside the car and slammed the door a little harder than usual. Then he bent down and tossed his keys to the jolly brunette. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, you better come in after me."

"Stiff upper lip, partner." Starsky said, and Hutch gave him a grimace, rolling his eyes.

He took his time checking both ends of the street before he crossed it and stopped in front of the brick laid steps. The funny feeling started when he didn't see Greg on the stoop.

From open to close every day of the month that he and his partner had been working at the library, a frumpy old man in black sweat shirt, sweat pants, black sneakers and a moss green jacket sat on the steps of the library working his way through a pack of cigarettes. He would sometimes borrow a book from inside and take it out onto the stoop so that he could smoke and read at the same time. Occasionally he had the paper with him.

Greg was always there, but he wasn't today. Hutch considered the empty street as he pulled on one of the doors to the main entrance, and figured it was the same Sunday factor keeping the streets free of cars, that left Greg's spot empty.

Hutch glanced back at his partner, shook his head at Starsky's ability to sleep anywhere, and walked through the doors into the swing of a baseball bat that bruised a rib and knocked the breath out of him. He bent over the pain only to be visited with more, taking five more hits to the back before he was on the floor wheezing.

His cheek burned where he'd crashed to the carpet. He was hurting but nothing was broken...yet. A pair of loafers came into view. Brown, tattered on the outside edges, with honest-to-god tassels over the toes. Thick fingers dropped down next, pulling his left arm out straight by the first two digits on his hand. The loafer came down on his knuckles, pinning his hand down.

"Where's Starsky?" Clare asked, somewhere in the distance.

Hutch couldn't see her in his limited field of vision and tried shifting his head until he saw the main circulation desk, and the woman perched on it like a lounge singer on a piano. Dorice and the two other ladies on staff had been tied to chairs and were lined up in the space between the patron side of the desk and the wall that isolated the typewriter room.

Hutch shifted, tried to pull his hand loose, then felt Loafers shift his weight and grind his knuckles into the floor. He heard a sob come from the line of chairs and strained to focus on the source of the sound. Dorice. Of course.

"You're upsetting your girl, Blondie. Where's Detective...Sergeant...David...Starsky?" Clare asked, taking pleasure in each syllable.

The bruises were still throbbing but Hutch was getting his breath back, and with it the clarity of mind that told him he had at least one good move. If Clare kept to her previous tendencies Hutch could assume that neither she, nor any of her men, were armed. That meant all he had to do was get away from Babe Ruth, and out the door, and he'd be home free.

Hutch flipped onto his side, his free hand and legs sweeping out in a clumsy effort to knock Loafers off his feet. He'd managed a handful of ankle and gotten one of his legs up and behind a knee when the bat came down hard. Harder than it could have if Loafers had been wielding it. The bone between his pinky and elbow snapped and Hutch screamed, curling in around his arm once Loafers lifted his foot.

Over the moans Hutch was trying to stifle he heard Dorice's scream dwindling into a keen, then Clare's voice.

"That's the ulna. The bone that runs from the end of your pinkie to your elbow. I learned about it from a book out in the 600s. See, your pinkie isn't as important as the other fingers. A break like that might get a cast, but not a full cast. Now..if Jessie breaks the other bone...like he's gonna do if you don't tell me where Starsky is, you will definitely end up with a full cast."

Hutch had managed to sit up and was dragging himself away from the silent pair, until his bruising back hit wall. He reached behind him with his right hand, found a lip on the molding and used it to get partially upright. His hand was turning purple and swelling against the closed cuff of his shirt. The brand new shirt that Starsky had bought him for his birthday.

At least he hadn't bled on it, yet, he thought, fiddling desperately with the button that was going to cut off circulation in a minute. Clare seemed content to watch and wait in silence, and said nothing until Hutch had managed to unbutton the cuff. Some of the swelling eased, the color in his hand shifting to an angry red.

"You're one tight lipped son-of-a-bitch." Clare said, then "Break him, Jessie."

"Now hold- wait a minute!" Hutch shouted, his right hand going out instinctively despite the little it would do to save him. His eyes danced between the guy with the bat and the lady that controlled him. Hutch grit his teeth and drew in a breath that expanded his ribcage and pushed against the bruises there. "I don't know where he is. I came here because Dorice called about some needles. Something like that doesn't take two of us. I came alone."

Clare crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at Dorice for a moment, "I find that hard to believe, Blondie. The two of you have been inseparable from day one."

"Nothin' I can do about that." Hutch muttered, closing his eyes and trying to concentrate on tempering the random bolts of pain coming from his arm and back.

"Well then." Clare said, picking up the phone that sat on the counter next to her. "You're going to call him, and get him here."

"Why so you can break his arm, too?" Hutch forced through gritted teeth, "If you think I'm going to drag my partner into your twisted little nightmare, you're stupid and crazy."

A second later Hutch's left shoulder took a blow from the tip of the bat that went through his body. He'd have kept his feet if it had stopped there, but Jessie seemed to be enjoying himself and the beating continued until Hutch was on the ground again. By then he was numb, but able to think clearly, able to recognize that Jessie had intentionally avoided his head and neck. The goal was to keep him awake and coherent. The pain was supposed to convince him to cooperate. They could keep beating him until he was nothing but bruises, and there would be no reprieve.

Hutch's final solution was to pass out, and he did so...or rather faked it, putting Olivier to shame. He withstood the kick and the shove without flinching, trying to relax every muscle until he heard the blessed words, "He's out."

Clare groaned, the sound exaggerated and pre-pubescent. "Get his keys and move his car off the street, Willy. Jessie, tie him to a chair, we'll start this again when he wakes up. In the meantime, dumb Dorice, you're gonna call Starsky again, and this time, get him here!"

Hands went through his pockets, the movements rough but only in the name of expedience.

"No keys." Willy said.

"He probably left them in his car. Real trusting for a cop." Clare grunted, rolling Dorice's chair closer to the phone. "Get out there and move that clunker off the street."

* * *

Long before Hutch's ten minutes were up Starsky noticed something weird about the library. He hadn't spent a lot of time on this side of the building, but there was something missing. He realized it was Greg at about the five minute mark.

Greg was always there. There were jokes about Greg being like the lions in front of the New York Metropolitan Library. When Greg died, the man himself said he wanted to be bronzed with a book in his hands and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Without Greg there was no Bay City library.

The bad feeling that had been plaguing Starsky the last few days hit full force around the seven minute mark and he was preparing to step out of the car when he recognized the goon, Willy, walking out onto the portico.

Starsky ducked down and back, laying the passenger seat back flat so that he was no longer visible but could still monitor Willy's progress. Starsky had his gun out and pointed at the driver's side door when it opened and Willy slouched into the seat like he'd done it a million times.

"Help you?" Starsky asked, enjoying the jump and the shout that he got out of it before Willy tried to reach into his jacket.

"Uh uh!" Starsky warned, gesturing with the gun. "Hands on the wheel."

"I knew that guy wouldn't be in there alone." Willy said, shaking his head, but keeping his fingers glued to ten and two.

"Nice to see you're in a talking mood, William. How about you tell me why you're getting into my partner's car like you own it?"

Willy clammed up, his face shifting into cautious thought. Starsky could see the lie forming behind his eyes and jabbed the muzzle of the gun into the guy's side, just above the pocket that he then searched. No gun, just a pocket knife. Starsky wanted to ask what in hell Willy was going to do with a pig sticker, in the face of a gun, but didn't.

"Clare told me to move it off the street."

"Yeah?" Starsky asked, checking the other pockets while still trying to stay mostly out of sight. "Why didn't she ask my partner to move it?"

"He's not doin' so good." Willy said, wincing and stiffening at the muzzle of the gun now practically touching his spleen.

"What'd you do to him?"

Willy was staring straight ahead, an awkward enough pose that someone watching from the library might catch on that he wasn't alone. Starsky fished in his own pockets for Hutch's keys, reaching with his right hand for the ignition.

"Drive."

"Where?"

"The garage dummy, and take it like grandma would, cause any faster is gonna end with a hole in your chest."

Willy turned the engine over and it coughed. He tried again and the squash sputtered and choked, then died. Willy started to sweat, shooting a panicked look toward Starsky.

"Guess you can't park it in the garage after all, can ya?" Starsky said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Try to relax, and talk. Tell me what's goin' on inside."

"It's Clare...she wanted another try at you and your partner."

"Why!?"

"I don't know! I don't know. Look, she's been weird lately. Past month or so her mind's been way in left field. We figured maybe she got herself pregnant or somethin' but she's hung up on you."

"Yeah, why?"

"Man...I don't know how her mind wor-"

"You better take a real good guess or your gonna be bleedin' all over my partner's car!"

"Okay! Okay um...uh...I mean..you...you and your partner arrested her a while back right? Maybe that's why. I mean she was in juvie for a couple of months before they could find her a foster home, and that was shit."

Starsky was quiet for a moment, leaning back so that he could see the library windows, and still keep his head down. "They got guns in there?"

"No...not unless Blondie has a gun."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah…" Willy whimpered. A second later he could feel his heart sinking into his bowels when the cold, hard metal of handcuffs snapped around his right wrist. Starsky wound the chain through the steering wheel, then the other link was jerked too tight around Willy's left wrist.

Once his right hand was free again Starsky pulled the keys from the ignition then turned on the radio and called in to dispatch. Mildred wasn't on duty, and it took whoever was on duty way too long to answer. Starsky was irritated by the time he got a human being on the line and made it absolutely clear while he demanded that dispatch call Dobey at his home and patch him through.

"What?" Came the response. No "did not copy", "say again" or "over", just "What?".

"Listen up, joker. Anybody else there at the precinct? Maybe somebody actually trained to do the job he's been assigned?"

"Nope. Just me." The voice said back.

"Unbelievable. You know, Willy, this is why I don't like working Sundays. This is Zebra Three to central, thanks for nothing."

"No problem, Zebra Three."

"God, you really are a dumb cop."

"Yeah, why's that?"

Willy clamped his mouth shut and Starsky jammed his gun a little harder against his ribs. "Because I won't call in a bunch'a do-gooders in cruisers...sirens blazing...kill my partner by lettin' your boss know I'm coming?"

Starsky scanned the street then looked to his cuffed prisoner and shook his head. "You're right. Real dumb. World of modern technology and I gotta hoof it to a pay phone. You...sit tight. You do anything that makes things worse for my partner, I'll shoot you in the foot. Hear me?"

Willy nodded emphatically and Starsky climbed into the back seat and out the rear passenger door, hiding behind Hutch's car, then the sedan in front of it, before he turned left at the corner and took off at a dead run.

The phone he found was around the corner at the YMCA building. His badge got him the use of the set behind their main desk and he called Dobey, got his answering service and left a message that he had the operator read back verbatim before he hung up.

He tried calling Granger and Kline, using the numbers that they'd been forced to exchanged after Dobey chewed them out for their lack of communication. Neither officer answered and Starsky slammed the phone down, knowing time was running out. The final call that he made was out of desperation. A desperate need to let somebody know that they were in trouble, even if he was risking the life and livelihood of the guy on the other end of the line.

"Just keep callin' those numbers I gave ya, until you can get somebody on the horn. Tell 'em, I'm going into the library through the basement." Starsky paused, listened to the reassuring voice on the other line then said, "Huggy, you're a lifesaver."

Starsky smiled at Huggy's "I better be!", then heard the restaurant owner's voice change a little, concern and anger edging into his tone. "I expect the two of you for beers and explanations when this is over."

"We'll be there, Hug." Starsky glanced out the window, able to see the front end of his partner's car from there. "I gotta go."

* * *

** The Bus


	5. Chapter 5

Letting the Galaxie sit for a few minutes seemed to calm its temperamental nature and the engine turned over finally. Starsky kept low in the backseat while Willy drove the car around and pulled it into the garage. He forced the cuffed man out of the car at gunpoint, fixing the cuffs around the strut between the back and front windows, before he pocketed Hutch's keys.

"You're gonna be here a while, Willy. And it's real quiet down here so you'll have time to think about just how loyal you wanna be to Clare. Get me?" Starsky asked, then found the staff key on the small ring and headed for the underground door.

A shouted, "Hey!" stopped him before he could disappear into the basement hallway. Starsky glanced back, standing in the open door, his gun at his side.

"They took a baseball bat to your partner. I br-...I broke his arm. But the rest was Jessie."

Starsky felt his stomach churn, rage boiling in his throat, his face burning red. He couldn't stop the tremble in his voice when he bit out, "That...was not wise."

He was shaking still when the door closed behind him and he stood in the empty, darkened hallway. Checking each of the doors to see if they were locked, and checking the rooms that weren't, became a chore that he hated doing. It kept him from Hutch, but it would help them both in the end, so he forced himself to be thorough.

It took him five minutes to clear the basement floor and start up the central staircase to the main library. How long had it been since Willy had left? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? How much more damage could they have done to Hutch in that time?

A baseball bat.

A broken arm and possibly worse.

And he still didn't know why.

* * *

Clare was pacing. Willy was taking too long to get back from the garage. She hadn't liked how long it'd taken for the car to move from the street.

If he'd been 'conscious' Hutch would have covered by explaining how touchy his baby could be. Being 'unconscious' had made him an object to be ignored, and had given him valuable recovery time. He'd filled in the gaps trying to think like his partner and predict what Starsky would be doing with each minute.

Backup over the radio first, then getting information from Willy about the situation inside and making it look like Willy was doing what he was told to do. Then...knowing Starsky, he'd try to get into the library on his own, probably through the basement door.

Which meant that Hutch had to "wake up" soon and be the distraction Starsk needed to get to the main floor unobserved. Clare made it easy for him. Jessie had figured out that he couldn't lift Hutch on his own so he'd been left on the floor, a non-threat with a broken and swelling arm and bruised back and ribs.

The only warning Hutch got was a tortured gasp from Dorice before the bat came down on his left thigh.

"He's not at home, and he's not at the precinct." Clare announced loudly, then Jessie swung a few more times, the last blow catching his back, above the hip bone. It hurt, and it kept hurting, making Hutch wonder if it was possible to break a muscle. "Now that we know you're awake, where's your partner?"

"Why...do you care?" Hutch asked, between gasps of pain.

Clare had moved, grabbing a chair and setting it against the outside wall of the typewriter room so that she was easily in his line of vision, and able to watch the front doors at the same time. "Let's think of the obvious answer to that question shall we? You're costing me my livelihood." She shouted.

"You sell drugs...to kids...kill 'em." Hutch tried to shift on the floor, felt his arm waking up and his back twitching.

Clare chewed at her lip a minute then said, "You probably grew up rich didn't ya...a hundred years ago. Lots of money, and lawyers to get you out of trouble and a nanny to wipe your ass. I'll bet your father never came into your bedroom at night for visits because your ma was out, earning extra money at "dance halls"."

Hutch had a feeling he knew where she was going. A nightmare of a life that she ran away from only to end up in California living with Bruce as the red-headed outsider, and watching even that 'home' fall apart at the hands of the cops.

What he and his partner might have seen as a needed rescue, could well have turned into a second nightmare for Clare, just one year too young to escape it. When she did escape, she took what she'd learned on the streets and made the best of it. He, Starsky and Meredith might have been there at the beginning but their involvement had ended quickly, other cases needing their attention.

The whirlwind of psychological implications swept through his brain like a tornado and Hutch closed his eyes, unable to compete with that and the flood of constant, pulsing pain.

Clare didn't like it, and Jessie stepped in, going at his back and side until one of the abused ribs finally gave in. Dorice screamed again, wailing loudly in sympathy. Hutch couldn't have drawn deep enough a breath to wail anyway, and found himself strangely grateful. His eyes were rolling in his head when he dragged enough air in to say something.

"Know...what's gonna happen?" Hutch felt his throat crack, too much air going out of his windpipe with too little moisture going back in. He did everything in his power to avoid coughing, forcing himself to breathe through his nose.

"Yeah..I know. I'm gonna have a private conversation with Starsky. And when we leave...to go to a new city!" Clare barked, irritated at the inconvenience of being driven out of town by cops. As if she hadn't considered that breaking the law might eventually lead to being caught. As if she thought she were completely in the right. "You and your partner are gonna regret...EVER trying to get in the way of my organization."

Hutch shook his head, working hard at controlling the panicked breaths his lungs were demanding. Desperate now to stay awake. "No. Jail. S'what's going to happen. Aggravated assault."

"Shut up."

"Hostages."

"Quit talkin', cop."

"And the murder...of Julie...Smith."

Clare didn't move. Hutch forced his eyes open, expecting a signal to pass between her and Jessie. But Clare was staring at him, stunned. "Murder?" She asked, confused enough to push the rage down. "I don't have a weapon. I don't carry a gun, or a knife. How can I be accused of murder?"

"Drugs."

"That wasn't murder. That was suicide."

Hutch closed his eyes, too tired to fight anymore. He felt hot and cold at the same time, and the array of broken bones were all speaking to him separately, filling in the gaps until his brain was overloaded with the same signal. He didn't have the energy, or the desire to work his way through the dystopian Wonderland that this particular Alice had built.

He wasn't going to help her justify her guilt anymore, and he was certain he wouldn't survive pissing her off again.

He jolted like everyone else did when his partner's voice projected through the quiet.

"Drop the bat." Jessie must have hesitated. "Drop the bat, or I shoot it out of your hand."

The bat went to the floor, the metal ringing as it bounced and Hutch forced his eyes back open, laying perfectly still until his partner's Adidas came into view.

"Back against the wall." Starsky said.

Jessie had his hands up and walked backwards, a feral look in his eyes. He stopped when he was even with Clare's chair and tried to drop his hands. "Keep 'em up or you lose 'em." Starsky warned, then softer, "Hutch?"

Despite the pain, the added worry for his partner, the absolute exhaustion, Hutch sighed and managed a weak smile. "Still here."

"You promised me you wouldn't bleed on that shirt."

"I'm…" Hutch started to protest then thought about the hit to his hip, the pain that started and wouldn't go away. Jessie must have busted open the small knife wound on his back. "...sorry." He finished, then struggled to control his lungs.

"Hang on." Starsky said, his voice a little colder than usual. He walked away and Hutch closed his eyes, not interested in the look of triumph Clare had on her face, the woman convinced Starsky's appearance was a victory instead of defeat.

His partner got to the phone and dialed one number. "Captain...Huggy reach ya? Yeah, got it under control. We need an ambulance. Yeah. Main floor. Thanks, Cap." The handset rattled onto the receiver and Starsky asked, "Dorice, Yvonne...Carol, you ladies okay?"

"They hurt him bad." Dorice breathed through still falling tears, her voice anguished as if the beating had been her fault.

"He's gonna be okay." Starsky told her, shifting back toward his partner.

"No, he ain't." Jessie said, his voice nasally, grating from word one. "He ain't never gonna be okay."

Clare was giving her henchman an almost fond look, as if she'd heard him make the claim before. As if he was right about it.

"Jessie's good at what he does. That's why he works for me." She said, slouching in her chair with her elbows on her knees, face cradled in her palms. She was staring at Hutch like he was a new attraction at the zoo.

"You're sick, you know that."

"S-starsk." Hutch reached toward his partner with his right hand. His arm had been trapped under his body for so long it felt like he was moving a lead weight, but the gesture got Starsky's attention and his partner went to his knees, reluctant to touch the blonde. Not sure that there was a place to touch him that wouldn't hurt.

"They get your head at all?" Starsky asked, his volume lowered to exclude everyone else in the room.

"Never hit 'em in the head." Jessie butted in, leaning away from his wall. "Head injuries confuse 'em. Knock 'em out. They gotta stay awake to feel the pain-"

"SHUT UP!" Starsky snapped, wanting desperately to shoot the man. In the gut, where it would hurt. A sick feeling in the back of his mind told him Jessie might just enjoy it.

"No head." Hutch managed, then felt Starsky settling onto the carpet with his back against the wall. His head was raised gently then set back down on Starsky's thigh and Hutch felt some of the strain along his left side ease.

Starsky's palm flattened against his cheek, brushing his hair back along with some of the sweat. Hutch could feel how hot he was against the cool of his partner's hand and groaned softly.

"Hang on, Hutch, hang on."

Hutch moved his right hand, curled it up around Starsky's knee, the best he could do to reassure his partner that he was still there...still fighting.

"You been trying all morning to lure me in here, Jewell. Seems we got a few minutes before you end up cuffed in the back of a cop car. What the hell do you want with us?" Starsky demanded.

Hutch focused blurring eyes on Clare. She'd been a little stunned at the use of her old name, and tried to cover it with a petulant glare, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest.

"I just wanted a little pay back, Curly-top. But this is almost better. Never realized you two were so chummy. I always thought blondie here was the third wheel, and you and the black lady were partners."

Clare waited for a response, her eyes dulling in disappointment when she didn't get one. She stretched her legs out in front of her, ankles crossed. The heels she wore had a knock-off designer label peeling off the bottom. "Doesn't matter." She said with a theatrical shrug. "You're here and we can finally go back to the good ol' days."

Starsky jerked a breath in through his nose, fighting for control. "What do you say we start with the truth? Six years ago you and a bunch of other kids were picked up as part of a theft ring. You went to juvie. Then you went into the foster care system. Then you were out. An adult with no criminal record. End of story."

"No!"

"End of story!"

"No!" Clare shrieked, launching forward in her chair, stopped only by the gun in Starsky's hand. She froze, but she was fuming, her eyes wide and pupils no more than pin points. "In juvie I was starved and beaten. In f-f-foster care..!" The word came out like a curse and tripped Clare up entirely for a minute. "Foster care was worse than Indiana. You know the state don't give you any money. You don't get nothin' when you're out, but a hand-me-down suitcase full of Salvation Army clothes. Then you get a choice. You can hook or you can deal."

Clare sat back. "If you hook you're good until you get pregnant, or sick. If you deal you're good until you get high, or start to look too old to fool the stupid narco cops." Clare said, her voice slipping into a strange mid-western twang that slid up into her nose.

Starsky recognized it, or at least what it meant. He'd broken through. He'd found the kid that Clare had been back when she went by Jewell and robbed houses for her bread.

"Did you hook or deal?" The brunette asked, his voice hard, the question coming out like part of an interrogation, not out of curiosity.

Clare tilted her head, her eyes flashing. She was beginning to invest in the conversation, the verbal game that Starsky suspected she'd wanted all along.

"Well I hooked first." Clare said, tilting her hips and turning her free ankle until it mimicked the pinup girl posters of the 40s. She flaunted herself in a way that was clearly familiar to her, and stomach turning to everyone else.

Starsky knew she was enjoying the discomfort she was causing, as much as she would enjoy actually turning one of them on with it. He had to shut her down fast and he sneered, looking down to Hutch's pale face as he said, "That didn't last long did it?"

That made her angry, and Starsky caught her furious glance to Jessie, before she realized that he was unarmed, and entirely distracted by her display.

Hutch was pale, far too pale, clammy to the touch. His breathing was shallow and rapid and there might have been blood on the inside of his lips.

If Starsky had been thinking he'd have untied the three librarians, who still sat silently bound to chairs. Free, they could have gone for water, cloths, blankets. All the things that Hutch needed.

"Only dumb bitches hook." Clare snapped, finally working through her impotent anger. The longer she had to cool off the more control she had, reducing the twang in her voice, correcting her posture, becoming "Clare" again.

"So you dealt? Who'd you deal for?" Starsky asked, then watched Clare's mouth open, prepared to proudly proclaim something to him that would give her dominance in the conversation. Then she realized who she was talking to. What she was preparing to reveal to Starsky, a cop, who could arrest her for it.

"MmMM. Not for you, Detective Starsky. You wanna get me on that charge, you're going to have to try a lot harder."

"I don't have to try at all. None of this has anything to do with me."

"Oh...yes it does." Clare said, laughing as she exaggerated her movements.

"Don't think so." Starsky said, feeling the tension in Hutch's brow ease under the side of his thumb. "You're a two bit drug mule, with a cop fetish and I'm the detective that got you out from under a fagan a couple years ago. You've just been doin' too much of your own product."

The anger was back. Clare was boiling at the trivialization of her grand moment. "You ruined...my life!" She raged, long fingernails digging into the underside of her chair.

Starsky ignored her, looking down to find Hutch's eyes closed, his face more relaxed than before. He was still breathing, heart still pumping, but he was out. He glanced toward the windowed doors that faced the street, the backup Dobey had promised taking far too long. When he looked back, Clare was no longer in her chair.

"Put the bat down." Starsky said, and Hutch's eyes flew open.

He didn't remember closing them, but he could feel his partner shifting under him. The pain rushed back in, and the blonde struggled to focus on Clare, standing in the middle of the floor with the bat, one hand closing around the tape wrapped handle like she was trying to strangle a chicken.

"You know what I learned from you...about cops?"

"Put it down, Clare." Starsky tried again, watching the impossible situation develop into a nightmare in his mind's eye. He was stuck in a position he didn't want to be in and he whispered an apology to his partner before he gently worked his way out from under Hutch's head.

"I learned that cops are liars. And useless. They got no power at all. Cops come in...Dorice, Yvonne...LISTEN UP!" Clare screamed, starting Dorice to whimpering again.

"They come to your rescue...they got guns, but what can they do if all you have is a baseball bat? Nothin'...unless they want to deal with IA demanding to know why they shot a defenseless girl who was carrying..." Clare laughed, grinning at the bat as she lifted it into the air. "Sports equipment?"

Clare swung, aiming for Starsky's gun hand as he came into reach. The curly-haired cop had seen it coming and moved his hand under the arch, then stepped in and tried to yank the bat from her grip with his free hand. The stiletto heel of one of her shoes came down on his foot, and he couldn't imagine the damage it did, but it hurt. He kept his grip on the bat and brought his elbow up, pushing forward, trying to knock her off balance.

Jessie moved, only a few inches, before Starsky caught the movement and brought his gun up again. Meanwhile Clare was grinding her heel, pushing the narrow spike through the cloth of his tennis shoe, digging into tendons.

"You can't shoot." She said, her voice a hard, witchy whisper. "You can't shoot because I'm just a woman. I'm unarmed. I'm weak."

Starsky slid his right hand up the bat, gripped it a foot from the top and pulled back against the tension Clare had on the handle before he let go, letting Clare, literally, knock herself out. Her head snapped back, she yanked her foot away from his to catch her balance and he slipped his knee behind hers, tipping the scales.

Clare went down, her hands wrapped around her head, curling in on herself protectively, instinctively.

Starsky avoided looking at his foot and fixed his stance. He remembered Jessie a second too late and for the second time in three days took a sucker punch to the jaw from the man. He went down, felt Jessie step in and dig at his fingers for the gun. The barrel was pointed at Jessie, Starsky's trigger finger free. One pull would end the grappling on the floor and save the justice system of Bay City hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

Instead of paying for housing, court costs, and the eventual incarceration, they would pay for the IA guys for a week and maybe a poor man's funeral. Then the city could move on and some might even consider Starsky a hero for what he'd done.

It was the smart move for a hundred different reasons but Starsky couldn't pull the trigger on an unarmed man and he paid for it. Clare was up, on her feet, recovering from the hit to the face like it'd happened to her before. She had the bat and used it like a golf club, tee-ing off and swinging at Starsky's exposed left knee.

The bat glanced off his patella, the tip digging into the tendon at the bottom left side of the joint before Clare's exuberant follow through knocked Jessie off Starsky. The brunette rolled to his right, desperately, making it all the way to the line of hostages in chairs.

His eyes were streaming with tears of pain, but he got up, leaning hard on the back of the chair Dorice was in. She tried to shy away from the gun, even as Starsky was bending to release her.

Clare had bent, concern on her face when she realized the damage she had done to her man. Jessie was moaning, chewing on his own blood, his nose smashed.

The detective got Dorice free, then went to work on Yvonne's bonds. "Untie Carol, huh, Dorice?"

Dorice didn't move, her face pale and drawn, eyes focused solely on Hutchinson. She took two steps toward the blonde then was stopped by Starsky's voice. "Dorice. He'll be alright, huh? Help us out."

It was the wrong thing to say. Dorice started to weep, covering her face in her hands, frozen to the spot. Yvonne, once free, rubbed arthritic fingers together then patted Starsky's arm and mumbled that she would take care of her girls.

Starsky stayed where he was, leaning hard on the chair Yvonne had been in, watching the bizarre drama of Clare and Jessie. The girl was on her knees, settled back on her legs, her hands keeping Jessie's head cradled in her lap, face up. He was choking on his own blood, gagging, his hands weakly digging at hers, trying to shift so that the blood would drain away from his windpipe.

Clare was cooing at him, brushing his cheeks with her fingers, apologizing for having killed him, but the man was still alive.

"Clare...killing him." Starsky heard Hutch say. "Yer…killing…"

"No…" Clare said. "You can't kill with just your voice. Voices don't kill. Bodies…" Clare sobbed, her teeth appearing in a grimace that turned her face into a garish mask. "...bodies don't kill."

A spray of blood flew up and out as Jessie coughed, and Clare blinked automatically at what had flown at her face. Her tears ran through it, drawing lines of light pink down her cheeks, but she didn't stop. She wouldn't let Jessie go.

Starsky moved away from the chair and took one step. His knee took his weight, but only barely and he used the wall to cross back to the tableau on the floor. By the time he reached Jessie the man had suffocated. His eyes were wide open, crossed in death, focused on the nose that Clare had unintentionally rearranged.

Starsky wondered if she knew she'd killed him. If the court would charge her with manslaughter or murder. Negligent homicide, maybe.

When Dobey came into the building a few minutes later, trailing two uniformed officers and Granger and Kline, he didn't know where to go at first. Hutch was on the floor, his back bloodied, his left arm swollen to twice its size. He wasn't moving and his eyes were glazed and fixed open, staring at the man and woman frozen together in the middle of the floor.

Starsky stood over them, his gun dangling loose in his hand, leaning against the wall behind him.

Then there was the trio of women and the line of three chairs. One of them had been seated, the other two hovering around her, staring just as intently at the human statues. The first, and only, order Dobey could give without fearing the consequences was to the EMTs that followed the police into the building.

He told them to work on Hutch and they bent to the task.

"Starsky?" Dobey stepped in close to his man, turning long enough to watch Granger and Kline separate Clare and Jessie, before he reached down for his officer's piece. It was unfired, the barrel cold to the touch, the clip full. Starsky hadn't even chambered a round. "Starsky?"

The brunette's eyes jerked away from the floor, searching for a moment before he was able to focus on Dobey. "Yes, Captain."

He was in shock, Dobey realized, and probably still suffering from the concussion of the night before. There were questions that had be asked still.

"Anybody else in the building?"

Starsky stared for a moment, his pupils dilated, his lips starting to purple a little. "I cuffed a guy to Hutch's car...in the garage."

A moment later Starsky was digging in his pockets, producing Hutch's car keys. He held onto them for a minute, staring at the Ford symbol. "Don't…don't scratch his car, Captain. Hutch...he'll get mad."

Behind them Hutch let out a cry, protesting the pain that even the gentlest efforts of the EMTs had caused. They stabilized his arm and propped him on his side with giant, oddly shaped pillows, prepared to do the rest of what they could do on the move.

"Go with your partner, son." Dobey said softly, stepping back so that Starsky could pass him, but the man stayed rooted to the spot, watching Hutch like a lost puppy. It was shock, the captain told himself, shock and fatigue and pain. And the hospital would be able to take care of most of those things. The big man slipped his hand behind Starsky's elbow and gently guided him forward, then caught the man as he took a step and his leg collapsed under him.

One call for a medic had two of the EMTs on the gurney at his side, and in minutes Starsky and Hutch were loaded into the same ambulance and on their way to County General.


	6. Chapter 6

Huge disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or a lawyer. Most of my information comes from "lite" sources such as the internet. This is for fun folks. Don't try this at home.

* * *

It took Dobey half-an-hour to hand the crime scene over to Kline, Granger and the responding officers. In that time he'd seen Clare into the back of a cruiser, watched the EMTs work on Jessie and revive him before putting him in a second ambulance, then talked with the three librarians, each of whom sang the same songs of praise for his two detectives. They had acted with bravery and valor, above and beyond, through the whole ordeal.

Dobey promised he would pass along the thanks and followed Jessie's ambulance to the hospital. As soon as he walked in the door the nurse at the reception desk came to meet him, fresh tears rolling down her face.

Dobey felt something horrible hit him in the chest and he took a hard breath. He didn't have to ask.

"Hutch is bleeding internally." She told him, knuckles white where she was gripping the blonde's chart. "They think one of his kidneys might be compromised and the other one may be worse. He's in x-ray now."

"Starsky?"

Bonnie, one of the more favored nurses, took in a shaking breath. "He refused treatment. He can barely walk. He's in the hallway outside X-ray."

Dobey thanked her and was already walking away when she shouted, "Second floor, east wing!"

He found his man sitting on a hard bench outside the x-ray suite.

Starsky's face was pale and sweat bathed, his jaw tight, eyes closed. He had an ice pack wrapped around his knee and another pressed against his jaw. He opened his eyes long enough to register Dobey approaching, then shut them again as the big man lowered himself onto the bench.

"Bonnie send you up here?" Starsky asked, his words a little mushy with the ice pack numbing half his mouth. "She said she was gonna bring up Hutch's paperwork...so I could fill it out."

Dobey pressed his lips, pushing his palms together and intertwining his fingers before he decided that had to be a dead giveaway of what he knew, but Starsky didn't. "How long ago was that?" he asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

"While…" Starsky said, sounding ready to pass out at any moment. "Don't know what they could possibly need to know...we been here so many times."

"Maybe Hutch managed to come up with somethin' new…" Dobey tried to joke, his laugh falling flat and pale to the floor.

Starsky rolled his head, his eyes expressing disappointment at the captain's lame attempt at humor up until he saw the guilty look. He pulled the ice pack from his jaw, drawing in a breath to ask what it was that Dobey had found out.

Before he could, an x-ray technician stormed out of the suite, silicone sheets flapping noisily at his sides. Minutes later an orderly was pushing Hutch's gurney through the door and into the hallway. Starsky managed to get up on his one good leg and tried to push away from the wall to follow his partner. The physician handling Hutch's case prevented it, stepping out of the suite on the orderly's heels.

He looked to the curly-haired detective, flashing a look of annoyance that he transferred to Dobey.

"Are either of you next of kin?" The doctor asked, looking pointedly at the captain, before he glanced down his nose at Starsky.

"I'm his partner. I came up with him." Starsky said, sluggishly trying to get around the doctor and getting a jolt of pain from his leg for his trouble.

"And you are?" The doctor asked, completely ignoring the stubborn invalid in front of him.

"Captain Harold Dobey, his superior officer."

The doctor fished in the breast pocket of his white coat, pulled out a business card and handed it to the captain. "Then you should call his parents and inform them that their son has been badly injured and it would be in his best interest if they got here in the next forty-eight hours."

The doctor turned abruptly and walked away leaving Dobey staring at the card and Starsky trying to process what the doctor had said.

"Wait a minute!" Starsky shouted, limping a few steps down the hall. Each time he put weight on his leg he grew a little paler. "Hutch is my partner, he's my best friend. I gotta know what's going on."

"Forgive my candor, Mr. Starsky, but unless you are a blood relative of Mr. Hutchinson you do not "gotta" know anything. Excuse me."

"HEY!"

"Starsky."

"Where the hell does he get off! They can't drag Hutch away like that and not tell me anything! I gotta find him. I gotta be with him, Cap."

"Starsky! You can barely stand. You need to be treated, now, before you make yourself worse."

Starsky wasn't paying attention, completely distracted by the haste with which the doctor had disappeared. "Captain...I-!"

"Get treated!" Dobey barked, a new tone hanging above the usual roar, that sounded very much like despair. "Hutch needs you, but he needs you healthy. For once in your life cooperate."

"What's goin' on, Cap?" Starsky asked. "What can Hutch's parents know, parents that never gave a rat's ass about him since he was a little kid...what do they get to know that I can't, huh?"

Dobey felt himself giving in to the lance of fear that had impaled him in the hospital lobby. He was letting the doctor's haste and the nurse's tears convince him that Hutch was dying, and was already trying to decide how to break it to Starsky.

"Cap'n…" Starsky started, his shoulders sagging, wallowing in the mire of clueless terror that no one was willing to fish him out of.

Dobey rallied, shoved the card in his jacket pocket and grabbed Starsky's shoulder, helping him back to the bench.

"You get treatment for that leg and you stay put until the doc says you can see him. Let me worry about the rest for now."

As if on cue an orderly pushing a wheelchair appeared at the end of the hallway, looking lost and frustrated. When he spotted the captain and his detective, his face went from fearing for his job, to figuring out the convincing lie he was going to use to explain losing a patient with only one good leg.

With his man in, at least, uniformed hands, Dobey headed for the nurse's station on that floor and used departmental pull to call his office, then Hutch's parents. By the time he got off the phone, he figured Starsky should have been x-rayed and placed in a treatment room.

Instead there was a moment of peace before Dobey was being paged over the intercom, the voice Bonnie's. Dobey reached the main floor lobby in time to see a doctor, an EMT, and an orderly desperately dragging a fighting Starsky down the hall, away from the OR doors. The doctor had a syringe of sedative that he was failing over and over to get into the writhing patient.

Dobey didn't get there fast enough to stop it, helpless but to watch Starsky jolt at the pain from the needle then slowly fold into a ragdoll. They were lowering him to the floor, the hapless orderly going for a gurney when Dobey heard the doctor say, "Put him in restraints!"

Dobey took two more steps, clapped a heavy hand down on the base of the doctor's neck and dragged him up to his feet. He squeezed hard enough to bring a flash of pain to the doctor's face then said, "That's my detective. He's been injured. He's worried about his partner."

Dobey took the man by his lapels, shaking him a little, disguising it as a gruff attempt at straightening the man's jacket. Then he lifted his chin so that he could look down his nose and ask quietly, "Do you know what it's like..to worry about someone you love?" Dobey lifted his free hand and pointed at the limp body the orderly and the EMT were putting on a gurney. "Do you know how that man spent his Sunday morning? Do you know what he's been through today, before you even got out of bed to read the funny sheets?" Dobey rattled the man one more time by his paper-straight lapel, then let him go as suddenly as he'd picked him up.

"Why don't you show that man some respect, treat his injuries, and when he wakes up, you talk to that... _surgeon_ in there, and authorize my detective as next of kin? And maybe...someday, when you need a cop to save your skinny ass on a Sunday morning... _he'll_ be willing to answer the call."

The doctor took in a breath, thought better of responding, and cleared his throat pointing toward the treatment room. The orderly rolled the gurney inside and after getting silent permission from Dobey, the doctor followed.

"I...I didn't know what he would do. I didn't think-" Bonnie's voice came from behind where Dobey still stood, filling the hall with his personality first, and body second.

"When Hutch is hurt, nobody knows what Starsky's going to do. Not even Starsky." Dobey said.

* * *

The baseball bat to the knee had chipped his patella and dislocated the bone slightly, requiring minor surgery to remove the bone fragment and reset the knee. The surgeon working on him had filed down the sharp edges of bone that the break had produced then sewn the man up. His leg was in a brace that would prevent him from turning, dislocating or tearing anything while he was in recovery. That meant several days of bed-rest and elevation, and even more time taking it easy.

The complication had been a previous dislocation in the same knee that had gone untreated for too long.*** A conversation with the physician that had treated the injury told him that Starsky was a difficult patient, but that a threat of "crippled for life" might get the officer's cooperation. The doctor kept it in mind, made sure his patient was settled, then went home for the night, his neck still painful from Dobey's papa-bear grip.

When Starsky woke, around midnight on Sunday, it was to the chest of a scrubbed orderly hanging over his bed, adjusting an IV stand between his bed and the wall. The brunette tried to orient, searching the room for Hutch, then for Dobey, then for anybody that wasn't the hound-dog he remembered evading at least once.

"Hush…"

"Oh...you're awake." The man said, instantly putting distance between himself and the patient, the way a hiker does when they finally notice the snake they've almost stepped on.

"'Eres...hush."

"Uhm…"

"My part-" Something caught in the patient's throat and the orderly rushed for the cup of water and straw that had been provided, helping the brunette drink most of only 8 ounces. That small effort clearly exhausted the man, but he stubbornly stayed awake, his question still unanswered.

"My partner...Hutsh...blonde guy."

"Uh...I don't...I mean, I wasn't…" The orderly stopped, thought of something, then put up a finger and said, "I'll be right back."

A few minutes later, a second orderly, the one who had pushed Hutch's gurney out of x-ray, appeared in the doorway, quietly protesting whatever it was that Starsky's orderly wanted him to do. The second man had to have been no older than mid-twenties, black, with the musculature of a boxer showing through his street clothes. His head was bald and shaved and his face had a tendency toward effortless deadpan that made his surreptitious glances toward the doorway seem almost comical.

"Who're you?"

"A guy tryin' to get home, man. You askin' about the blonde guy?"

Starsky didn't have to nod but he did, struggling to sit up. The orderly pushed him back down with a casual hand against his chest and Starsky groaned softly.

"I can tell you what I overheard the doc sayin', but don't take me to the medical board on it, hear me?"

Starsky's face scrunched up in confusion and he asked, "What?"

"I was in with your blonde friend, when they were taking x-rays. I overheard the doctor. I ain't got no doctorate but you hang around long enough, you learn things above your pay grade, know what I mean?"

"Where's my partner?" Starsky asked again, not sure that the orderly even had the right room.

The orderly's lips pressed together and he stalled for a moment. He hadn't been around for the "attack" that Starsky was now famous for, but he'd heard about it plenty, and he wasn't interested in staying another hour to fill out an incident report.

Dropping his voice, he spoke slowly, "Doctor Dean was worried about the ribs, said a piece of one floated, punctured his left kidney. They prepped him for OR and they removed the bad kidney. The other one is pretty beat up too. Doc says it's failing. He needs a donor."

It took a minute, but some things started to sink in. Hutch had lost an organ. An important one. The other organ that he needed, to keep on living, wasn't doing so good. Starsky could fade back into his memory and pick out a dozen different medical reasons for Hutch's kidneys to have suffered damage over the years.

"Donor?"

"Kidney donor. He needs a healthy kidney from somebody that's got a spare."

"Take mine." Starsky slurred.

"No way. Doc Dean wouldn't go for it with you on the meds you're on. Besides, the donor has to match. Same blood type. Maybe more. That's why the deadline. They can keep him goin' on that one kidney for a week, but...doc wasn't too optimistic about that even."

"S'why...parents?"

"Blood relatives stand a higher chance of being a good donor." The orderly said, nodding.

Starsky sighed, his eyes rolling around the room, trying to figure out why the thought of Hutch's parents saving the day was making his heart race with fear. When he finally figured it out he said, "Parents...don't come?"

"He got any siblings?"

"Um…" Starsky sighed.

"There's a way to keep his blood clean with a machine. Your partner got the bread, you can take him up to Seattle."

"Washington?"

"Yeah. They got a machine up there, and a committee that decides who gets treatment and who doesn't. Put his name in the hat, maybe you get lucky."

"How long?" Starsky asked, raising his hand weakly and turning his forefinger in a circle.

The orderly shifted uncomfortably then crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't know…maybe too long."

"So...donor?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

"Actually...there's a dead guy...well, brain dead anyway, that came in right after you guys. Doc thinks he's a match, but because he's only brain dead we have to find his next-of-kin for permission to..you know." The orderly mimed pulling a plug out of a wall, clicking his tongue.

The flippancy with which the orderly had pretended to end a life bothered Starsky, but it was one of a hundred things in his muddled brain.

"What's..s'name?"

"Not my patient, uh...Thomas something. But the home address was a bust and Ma Bell couldn't get a number."

Starsky's eyes were blinking closed and getting harder and harder to open again. He tried to rally, shaking his head against the pillow and drawing in a deeper breath. "Where's Hutch?"

"He's...he's recoverin' man, but you can't see him. He's in isolation, all bound up on machines. He can't be moved for 48 hours unless it's to surgery."

"Thomas guy…"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Dobey…find his...mom."

The sentence sort of made sense, and once the orderly had parced it out he took a moment to check the safety railings on the gurney and the IV in Starsky's arm.

"S'name?"

"My name?"

Starsky nodded, eyes closed now, as they would remain for the next few hours.

"Believe it or not, I'm Abraham Jonathan Lincoln." The orderly grinned, then heard the faint snore and shook his head.

* * *

Dobey had done everything in his power to urge Hutch's parents to make the trip out, without flat out telling them that their son was dying. He'd tried to be sensitive and supportive, but in the end the self-indulgent pandering had gotten on his nerves.

After he'd spoken with Doctor Simon Dean who quickly and unemotionally laid out exactly what Hutch's chances without a new kidney would be, Dobey called them back, prepared to lay the situation on the line. Hutch's parents were out. The housekeeper promised to have them call back as soon as they returned.

He'd given the housekeeper three different numbers and stayed at the hospital until both his men were taken to recovery. He was allowed to look in on both, and had started with Starsky, watching the man sleep for a few minutes before he was lead to the isolation ward.

Hutch had been hard. His color was off, his skin too pale, too yellow. Most of the bruises were hidden by the blankets. The contusions Dobey could see on Hutch's left arm were deep, milky and pale at the center and blossoming in reds and purples toward the edges. Even sedated and unconscious, Hutch was in pain.

Dobey hadn't been allowed to stay long, but he still felt guilty about leaving. He'd lingered in the hall outside Hutch's room, taken the stairs down instead of the elevator and watched Starsky sleep for another ten minutes before he finally wandered toward the door.

He was hovering just outside the range of the lobby doors when Bonnie called his name. He turned and blinked at the manila folder she was holding out toward him.

"What's this?" Dobey asked.

"The medical report and hospital records for Jessie Thomas. The…the man that came in when you did." Bonnie waited, watching Dobey flip the folder open and read over the front page. "Doctor Dean said you wanted to see it."

It took him another moment, the part about Dean throwing him, but Dobey finally put the name together with a face in his memory and realized that Jessie was the man that had attacked Hutch in the library. The man that the EMTs had revived before loading into an ambulance. Essentially, Starsky's prisoner.

"How...uh, how's he doing?"

Bonnie cleared her throat, shifting uncomfortably before she said, "Well he's dead. I mean his brain is dead. He's on a respirator and a machine pumping blood for his heart. We're trying to get a hold of next-of-kin but he only had one contact."

"Contact?"

Bonnie nodded and leaned in, flipping through the pages before she pointed to a name.

"Clare Donovan." Dobey said, his jaw tightening.

"We couldn't reach her at the number he listed."

"No...her number's changed." Dobey sighed.

"You know her?"

"Not yet." Dobey said, "But we're going to get to know each other real well. Thank you, Bonnie. Keep close to my boys, let me know if anything changes."

Bonnie nodded and Dobey left, calling the municipal lock-up from his car and requesting that one inmate, Clare Donovan, be placed in an interrogation room ASAP.

When he arrived he was taken through the echoing halls to a small room bordered by windows. A male guard with a name tag that read White stood outside the room, and a female guard, Speece, stood inside guarding Clare who had been cuffed to her seat.

When Dobey came in she smiled in welcome, squirming around until she could cross one leg over the other. "Hi, my name is Clare." She said, as if she were there for an interview.

"I'm Captain Dobey. Today you were responsible for injuring one of my men, and nearly killing another, so let's not pretend we're going to be buddies." Dobey chose not to sit in the other chair in the room, standing at the corner of the table that separated him from Clare.

She glanced at the empty seat intentionally, then looked back to Dobey. When he didn't take her 'invitation' she sighed and slumped a little. "You're talking about Starsky and the blonde guy."

" _Detective Sergeant Starsky_ and _Detective Sergeant Hutchinson_."

Clare's cheeks flared bright red and her eyes bounced to the left, as if she had wanted to check Speece's reaction, then had forced herself not to. Instead, her eyes came to rest on the manila folder and she watched Dobey toss it onto the table. The folder slid a foot, then came to rest six inches from the edge.

Clare read the name on the white label then squirmed again and asked, "Thomas, Jessie, am I supposed to know this person?"

"He's your accomplice." Clare opened her mouth, probably to deny the allegation and Dobey cut her off. "He suffered a blow to the head and suffocated in your arms. The medical technicians were able to revive him before they took him to the hospital."

Clare's demeanor changed, the blush taking over and a few beads of sweat peppering her brow. She drew air in through her nose and Dobey noticed her eyes reddening. "Is he okay?" She asked, her voice rough with congestion.

"He's in a coma. He's being kept alive by machines. The hospital needs to find his next of kin, and you're the only one listed in his medical file."

Clare stared for a moment, itching to open the file but unable to with her hands secured. Dobey could see her mind flying, calculating, adding and subtracting facts, favors and lies until she lifted her chin a tiny bit. The look she gave Dobey was all confidence and dominant femininity. A combination of everything that she'd learned in seedy bedrooms, dank foster homes, dark back alleys. She was, for a moment, in charge.

"Unless you can give us a name Mr. Thomas' case is referred to the county, and I can tell you right now, they won't waste their time or money on a dead man wanted for nearly beating a cop to death."

Clare's eyes changed, hardening as her lips thinned and her jaw tightened. "He ain't got no parents, cop. Just me. No family. Me."

"Where did you meet? And when?"

"Let's go for a stroll and I'll tell ya." Clare grinned softly.

"Not a chance."

"You got a whole folder here of information. Medical charts, am I right? You practically know what Jessie's insides look like and you've come all the way here to ask me about his parents. It's not cause you care about Jessie's rights, is it?"

Speece's eyes widened and she glanced up at Dobey from where she stood behind Clare, her mouth falling open slightly.

With an angry grunt, Dobey gathered the file and left the interrogation room, the interview suddenly ended.

* * *

An hour later Dobey sat in his office staring at a criminal record that had more to say about Jessie Thomas than either Clare, or the hospital's medical file.

He knew where Thomas had gone to school, where he'd gone to church, where he'd stolen his first candy-bar. Who he'd first backed into an alley and beaten. Where he'd put his first victim's body hoping, erroneously, that the victim would die without being able to identify him.

But in the boxes set aside for mother and father there were identical phrases, typed in all capital letters. "WARD OF THE STATE"

Dobey collected the paperwork and drove back to the hospital, the human part of his mind warring with his soul. The friendship and paternal warmth he felt for Hutchinson fighting against the stern, law abiding cop he'd endeavored to be throughout the years.

There was a decision to be made, and while Dobey had convinced himself that he would not, in the end, be the one to make it, he knew that he was contributing.

Half an hour after he arrived at the hospital a collection of medical professionals, two lawyers, the captain and a nurse stood in the hospital director's office quietly discussing the situation.

"The patient, Thomas. His condition.." Director Chidester prompted, looking to Dr. Dean.

"Braindead. Heart and lungs are still viable and responding to artificial stimuli."

"And the officer, Hutchinson?"

Dean's eyes scanned the room, hitting Dobey's gaze then flickering away quickly. "He is...not well. The remaining kidney may function for a week or more, but a previous injury to the area did substantial damage."

"Has Hutchinson been informed of his condition?"

"No." Dobey said unable to fight the need to remind the group of his presence. "He's been unconscious since before he arrived at the hospital."

"His next of kin, Captain-"

"Dobey."

"Dobey, have the next-of-kin been informed of Mr. Hutchinson's-"

"Without full knowledge of my officer's condition I had only so much leverage on hand to convince his parents to fly out here from Minnesota." Dobey settled his eyes on Dr. Dean's, but kept his tone professional. "By the time I knew how serious his condition was, I couldn't reach his parents again."

Director Chidester monitored the unspoken tension between the doctor and the police captain for a breath before he asked, "And Mr. Thomas' parents?"

One of the lawyers, standing to the left of Chidester's chair, took his reading glasses off and set a copy of the information Dobey had gathered on the wide oak desk they'd formed around. "According to the police record, Mr. Thomas was an orphan. No parents, no siblings."

"And this...Donovan woman?"

"Currently in police custody. Mr. Thomas is also in police custody, charged with causing the injuries that damaged Officer Hutchinson's kidney in the first place." Dobey clarified, meeting the eyes of each man in the room as they reacted.

"A strange sort of irony." The director stated, then fell into thought. "In a world without legal implications, law suits or moral ambiguity, the solution would be simply and mathematically thus: If we maintain Mr. Thomas' life it will require time, personnel, resources and funds that the hospital can not afford on its own. If we simply let Mr. Thomas die, those parts of him that are still viable and living, and useful, will have been wasted. Mr. Hutchinson will likely die without a kidney transplant and the sooner he receives the new organ, the better. In Mr. Thomas there is such an organ."

Chidester paused, looking around him at the faces of the doctors and legal professionals especially. "The only person to object to the termination of the artificial life support that Mr. Thomas is currently receiving is incarcerated facing, I assume, at least one felony charge if not more. Correct, Captain Dobey?"

Dobey didn't respond beyond a subtle nod, his head tilting back a bit.

"And this Donovan has no more legal claim to Mr. Thomas than you or I." The director stopped again, sat back for a moment then asked, "Captain Dobey, what does the police department do when a suspect dies in custody?"

Dobey was surprised by the question and racked his brain. "The case is closed. The victims may decide to sue the estate of the accused but-"

"But Mr. Thomas has no estate so far as we know...he has only a body that his mind can no longer control." Director Chidester looked up to the lawyers flanking him. "Correct me if I am wrong, gentleman, but as Mr. Thomas is Captain Dobey's prisoner, his remains are currently impounded by the police, yes?"

The lawyers conferred, then each nodded, astounded at the conclusion that they had none-the-less come to.

"Very well, Captain, it would seem the decision has come to you. As the arresting officer you now have custody of Mr. Thomas' remains and can choose-"

"I'm not the arresting officer." Dobey said, then wiped his sweat soaked face with the kerchief he'd dug from his pocket.

The men around him exchanged glances before the director asked, "Who is?"

Dobey hesitated a beat before he said, "Sergeant Starsky."

* * *

***Tehachapi


	7. Chapter 7

The following morning, an hour after Starsky had awakened, been examined, fed and dosed with a light painkiller, a strange collection of men waited outside his room, while Dobey spoke to his man in private.

It was Dobey's job to bring his detective up to speed and, while he was doing that, decide if Starsky was coherent enough to even consider the decision that had come to rest on his shoulders.

Without the heavier painkillers in his system making his movements sluggish, Starsky was a mess of jerks, twitches and winces of pain. He did everything in his power to sit still but Dobey's careful explanation of the situation elicited greater and more frequent outbursts that had his heart rate spiking.

Dr. Dean interrupted the conversation prematurely, more concerned about the patient having a heart attack, than the kid gloves they'd recommended the situation be handled with. The flood of professionals that oozed into the room after him began to decide that the time for their legal conference had not yet come.

Starsky watched it happen with even greater alarm and panic until he put his hands up and shouted, "Hold it a second!"

His hands went back down to the bed, lifting his frame off the mattress then settling again in a position that eased the pull of the elevator holding his leg up. Then his hands went to the handrails and he held on as Dr. Dean raised the head of the bed to meet his back. They waited as he settled, his diaphragm the first muscle to relax, then his face.

"How much time as Hutch got?" Starsky asked once he could get deep enough a breath to say it in one go.

Three or four voices answered at once, arguing over one another until Starsky shouted, "Just answer the question."

All eyes went to Dr. Dean and he met Starsky's eyes straight on. "The sooner the transplant of a _healthy_ , _living_ kidney occurs, the better."

Starsky went quiet again, his eyes darting away from the intense group of faces, his lungs working like bellows to supply the oxygen that he needed to think straight. "This decision isn't mine to make-" Immediately the voices started again, rehashing the dense conversation they'd had the night before but Starsky shouted, "Just listen to me! If Hutch dies…"

Starsky's eyes immediately welled with tears, but he forged on. "If H-hutch dies, we're the ones that have got to live with it. But if Hutch lives, and it's because... _Jessie_ …" Starsky spat the name out, looking like he might puke. "...died. Hutch...has to live with it. Hutch has to know...he _has_ to know where this second chance is coming from."

Protests came from every corner of the room.

"It's not wise to even consider waking Mr. Hutchinson…"

"Legally speaking Hutchinson has little say in the matter…"

"Starsky, there may not be time. He may not be-"

But the voices dwindled on their own this time, each man or woman in the room eventually falling into an uncomfortable silence as they watched Starsky's eyes dart, watched his chest heave with each labored breath. The brunette let his head fall back against the bed and closed his eyes for a second or two, then lifted his head again, hands still white-knuckled against the railing of his bed.

"Can you wake him? Can you get me to him?" Starsky asked, skewering Dr. Dean with his gaze.

"No." Dean said, glancing around him at the hardening faces. "I won't move him, or you. But I will try to wake him."

The protests came again and Dr. Dean seemed to ignore them completely heading out of the room again. He paused at the door long enough to add, "If he is stable, and if he can remain absolutely still and coherent…I'll send a call down to that phone. But Mr. Starsky, every moment that your partner is agitated and not at rest, is a moment he doesn't have left."

Starsky's heart was beating faster than he remembered it beating before. He'd never been so scared. Or maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him. But he nodded once in understanding, knowing under the fear and the panic and the pain, that he was doing the right thing. Hutch had to know. Hutch had to hear it from him, and he had to know the decisions that were being made for him.

If he had learned nothing else from Terry, Starsky had learned that best friends did what was best for each other first. Starsky knew he couldn't live with his partner's breathing body, but without the trust and love that had sustained them for so long.

As the group filtered back out of the room, Starsky's body remained tensed, fighting the fear, fighting the pain. He focused intently on Dobey who hadn't moved once from the chair by the side of the bed.

"He _has_ to know." Starsky said.

Dobey studied the young man in front of him, just as worried about the situation, and both of the men embroiled in it, as Starsky was. Just as aware of the impossibility of what Starsky wanted to happen, and yet...despite all reason, believing wholeheartedly that Starsky would get through to his partner, and Hutch would be able to make the decision for himself. Somehow…

"I know he does, son. I know he does."

Starsky couldn't sleep, but he managed to doze after the first hour stretched on. Dobey stayed with his man, working on copying down all that he could about the strange case, the conversation in Director Chidester's officer and the events that followed.

He'd filled a dozen pages with chicken scratch, filled his belly with too much coffee, and the room with an abundance of heavy sighs when, four hours later, the phone rang.

It took him a few minutes to come around, but when he did Starsky's eyes went straight for the phone.

Dobey rose, crossed the room, picked up the receiver and said, "This is Dobey."

Starsky stared at him, eyes boring into his brain, trying to hear the voice on the other line. All he got was a profile view of Dobey intentionally not looking at him, then a nod, and "I'll put him on."

Starsky took the phone and put it to his ear.

"Hutch?"

"..."

"Hutch buddy, it's me. Starsky."

"...He can hear you, Starsky. He was intubated and his throat is a little swollen, so he can't speak, but we've got a blink system going. He can hear you, keep talking."

Starsky's eyes were streaming when he glanced up at Dobey, then swiped at his face and squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to concentrate.

"Hutch...you gotta help me with somethin'...uh...see they've got...they've done all these tests...and...and they had take out one'a your kidneys. And...you've been shot so many _damn_ times, your other one isn't any good anymore either."

Starsky stopped, his face drenched, his teeth gritted together until he could speak again. "We got...we got a donor...a kidney donor but...uh...he hasn't got any family. And he's somebody you know, Hutch."

"Yes, all yes's, Starsky, keep going."

"It's Jessie, Hutch."

"...No."

"Hutch...Hutch listen to me."

"He's saying, No. No, No, repeatedly."

"Hutch, shut your damn eyes and listen to me." Starsky waited, listening to the bustle in the background. The beeps of machines, voices speaking in hushed alarm.

"He shut his eyes, Starsky."

"Ok...ok. Hutch...why are we cops, huh? It's because we've seen the hate and the bad and...and all those lives that start out clean and pure and they go down the tube. It's because of people like Lisa, and Joey…"

"Yes, yes, keep going."

"Like...Huggy, and Jackson."

"Yes."

"Like Terry…"

"Yes."

"Like-"

"Yes."

"Jessie was one of them once too. I'm sure of it. Clare...Clare was too."

"Sta-" It was raw, barely there, and it sounded like it had hurt him immensely, but Starsky heard the rasp of his partner's voice and couldn't breathe for a moment. "Get...point."

A grin that made his jaw burn with pain split across his face and Starsky dragged in a hard breath. "Maybe he doesn't deserve it, but if his dying saves the life of a cop as good as you, maybe it'll make up for the mess Jessie made of his life. It'll sure as hell make my life easier...big dummy."

There was a long pause and Starsky could have sworn he heard chuckling in the background.

"Leg..al?"

"According to two lawyers, a police captain and a hospital director, yeah."

"You...k?"

"God, Hutch, yes. I'm more than okay with it."

"Do it." Hutch said and Starsky collapsed back against the bed, closed his eyes and felt like he'd turned into a rainbow. He was raining and his sun was shining at the same time and the result was a magnificent burst of brilliant color that lead to a pot of gold.

Dobey took the phone, watching his man collapse into exhausted tears, fighting a tense smile that couldn't be dampened by the bruise on his jaw. The captain put the phone to his ear and asked, "That good enough for you, Doctor?"

"More than enough, Captain. We're prepping him now. Do me a favor and keep your floor of the hospital quiet for the next six hours."

Dobey laughed into the phone then promised he'd do his best before he hung up. One glance told him he wouldn't have any trouble for a good while. Starsky was asleep, head tilted toward the sunlight coming through the window near his bed, the smile still lingering.


	8. Chapter 8

Warning: Some images may be considered disturbing.

* * *

It was well into Monday evening before Hutch left surgery. By that time one 48-hour clock had ended, and another had begun. Dobey left the hallway outside isolation, descended a floor and visited Officer Kyle who was being placed in the room with Starsky. He was going to live, the doctor had promised, and recover fully.

Dobey stayed until the man awakened, took the time to explain why Kyle was there, what had happened to him and his partner, and where the situation stood. When he left, both Officer Kyle and Sergeant Starsky were sleeping again. Something Dobey wished he was preparing for himself, but there was more to be done.

The autopsy report for Officer Logan had come in, and his body was being released that evening into the custody of the family. Dobey had to be there to sign release papers, and had offered to ride with Logan's girlfriend, and mother, to the funeral home.

It was after midnight, technically a new day, by the time Dobey dragged himself to his office. A pile of phone messages, papers needing signed and unread reports were scattered across his desk. All the work that he hadn't been doing while he helped to decide what should be done with a man's dead body, after the man wasn't around anymore to decide for himself.

Dobey sat and stared at the depressing pile and began to organize it. The reports went in one corner of the desk, papers to be signed in another. Phone messages he read as he went, making notations on his calendar that ran almost weeks in advance.

The first phone message from Columbus, Indiana was almost tossed before he recognized the butchered name at the bottom. Minnie had taken the message, a Sergeant Wainwright had called and had some information for a Detective Huffinson. She'd thought it was a prank call, but Wainwright insisted that he'd had a conversation with the detective late on Saturday evening and had spent most of Monday trying to track down information on a Clare or Jewell Nolastname.

A second message promised that Sergeant Wainwright would fax what he had found to the station.

The third message was attached with a paperclip to the folder of faxed documents. Dobey put the messages and the folder to the side, finished organizing his desk, then left his office, the folder tucked into his briefcase. He went home, showered and shaved, and ate a crack-of-dawn breakfast with his wife.

They talked about the two of her husband's men that had almost become family, Dobey giving her the details of the incredible conversation he'd heard only half of. He told her about Officer Kyle, and his deceased partner Officer Logan, and outlined what the rest of the week might look like with the start of depositions, a funeral and a bail hearing.

"And this?" Edith asked, setting her fingertips on the edge of the folder that hadn't left her husband's side since he'd arrived home.

"There's a girl at the heart of all of this." Dobey said, studying the blank folder that he'd intentionally left closed since he'd first seen it. "A very sick girl. Her man put Hutch in the hospital, and she put Starsky there. That's from her hometown."

Edith considered the folder for a moment, then pulled her manicured hand away from it and slid her fingers over her husband's palm, gripping his wrist. They ate together in silence, connected physically. The food was nourishing and full of flavor, love and warmth. Dobey had once joked that he'd married his wife for her cooking, but there was so much more to their marriage now, he'd stopped making light of it.

Now there were children. Now there was a home that they had fought together to preserve and build. Now there were mutual friends that they both cared for, and prayed for. Now there was a strong bond of trust that only got stronger with each new trial.

Now there were 4:30 am breakfasts that Edith happily cooked, and ate with him, knowing that the lack of sleep meant time with her husband, time that he chose to spend with her, rather than let her sleep alone and eat in an all night diner.

That was why Edith didn't complain about the time Harold spent looking after his men. There was no question in her heart or mind as to her own importance in her husband's life. She knew her husband's heart and she was blessed to belong to a man who cared as much as Harold did, about so many. She was blessed too by the trust he put in her, pouring out each of the stories he'd lived through the years.

She'd been quietly copying them down in her spare time and had quite the collection. She knew this newest one would be easy to remember.

By 5:30 am her husband was out the door again and Edith set about making breakfast and sack lunches for her children, already making notes in her head for the words she would be preserving in a few hours.

* * *

Starsky jerked awake and blinked at the dim world around him. He'd crossed his arms over his chest in his sleep and the IV that was taped to his arm was pulling at his skin, making it itchy and red. Starsky absently satisfied the itch and scanned the room trying to decide what had brought him out of the dream he'd been having.

Kyle was still in his bed, quietly snoring. The door to the room was closed and there was no one in the corners. Starsky sat up a little, groaning at the pressure it put on his elevated leg and looked to the phone. One of the lights was blinking.

He remembered that light. It had been there while he was talking to Hutch. Starsky stared at the little orange glow, ticking on and off insistently in the darkness, until he couldn't stand it anymore. He leaned out of his bed as far as he could go without falling over, caught the cord to the receiver and pulled gently, sliding the phone to the edge of the small table it sat on. Once he could reach it, he grabbed the whole thing and sat with the phone in his lap, staring at the strobe.

Starsky checked on Kyle, briefly, making sure the kid was still sleeping before he picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Starsk.."

"Hutch?"

"Help me."

"I'm comin'." Starsky said, and tossed the phone to the floor. Instead of crashing it landed with a muted thud and Starsky checked on Kyle. Still asleep. Still completely unaware of the rescue attempt about to begin.

Starsky fiddled with the elevater, trying to figure it out and finally pulling his knife out of a pocket of his jeans, and cutting the annoying, nylon rope.

He'd made it out of the room, down the hall and almost to the stairs when Clare showed up in a 1940's women's softball league uniform with a Louisville slugger over her shoulder. Starsky was remarkably without pain but he knew he wasn't going to make it into the stairwell in time. Not without having to fight Clare off.

For a solid minute he managed to block every swing, his arms like steel, his head unbreakable. Then Clare distracted him with a flip of her skirt and she got in a good one. One solid whack to his shoulder that stung like the worst bee-sting.

Starsky felt his moves slowing down, his arms no longer able to withstand the blows, his head vulnerable. Clare took one last swing, cracked his head and he was out.

* * *

The phone call came sooner than Dobey expected it, and he'd made the hospital in half the time it normally took. Still, by the time he got there Starsky had been sedated again, the surgeon was looking over his leg to see if surgery was needed to repair the damage the detective had done to himself.

Dobey was rushing to the double room answering Bonnie's anxious questions.

Had Starsky ever had a bad reaction to a sedative before?

No.

Did Starsky have a history of sleepwalking?

No.

Who was Clare?

Dobey held up the briefcase he'd brought in with him and said, "That's what I was about to find out."

Inside the room, Starsky was semi-conscious and mumbling. One minute he was silent, drooling into the pillow while he stared at the wall, and the next he was slurring something about batting averages and his partner. Dobey stared at the mess in the room while the surgeon mumbled about the stitches that had broken open when Starsky wrestled his way out of the sling.

"How far did he make it?" The surgeon asked, and Bonnie shook her head.

"The door, tops, but by then he was so violent, the orderly practically tackled him to the ground."

The phone was on the floor, Starsky's IV tower had been tipped and the bag punctured, the fluid creating a puddle on the tile. The nylon rope that had been holding Starsky's leg was now a tangled mess. The blankets from the bed were scattered around the room as if they'd been flung violently.

"I'll need a suturing kit, some disinfectant, bandages, a new IV needle, and a bag of fluids." The surgeon ordered, then glanced up at Dobey as if it were the first time he'd realized the man was there. "And a stronger sedative." The surgeon said pointedly.

Dobey recognized him as the man he'd strong armed not that long ago and glared quietly. He wanted to get closer to Starsky but there was too much going on in the room at the moment. He hung out just inside the door, watching the frantic race until the bed and floor had been cleaned, the blankets reset and his man rebandaged.

By the time Dobey could get to him, Starsky was long gone, sleeping so deeply he wasn't even snoring. Dobey went to the chair in the corner of the room, pulled a rolling tray over in front of him and put his briefcase on top. He sat for a few minutes in the silence, staring at the brass latches, knowing he wasn't going to enjoy what awaited him inside.

Then he leaned forward and popped the first latch.

* * *

Clare Donovan aka Jewell aka Julie Donotelli had been born in a hospital in Columbus, Indiana to a young mother who had no intention of keeping the baby. She was separated from her mother after only hours of being held, placed in a bassinet with the name Donotelli on it, her first name still undecided. The Donotelli's had agreed to adopt her.

By all appearances a wealthy couple, John and Frita Donotelli had come from Illinois and settled in the small city looking and acting out of place most of the time. They're attempt at blending in with neighbors on a busy street full of children had failed miserably and they eventually discovered they would have to adopt if they wanted a family.

According to the adoption counselor, John and Frita desperately wanted a child, but the counselor couldn't figure out why. Frita hardly seemed the motherly type and John's concerns always seemed to turn to image. The baby had to be white, healthy, had to have the same hair type as one of the parents. The counselor felt at the time that the new addition was meant to help the Donotelli's blend in, but reserved her concerns.

When a newborn fitting the couple's description was reported as up for adoption, the counselor saw the new family to their home and decided that she had been wrong before. The baby would be fine, she convinced herself, the Donotelli's the best parents for her.

That was, until Julie Donotelli showed up in the system again. At the age of 8 she had tried to burn the family home down.

Frita hadn't been home and John had been badly, if strangely, injured by the fire. John insisted on pressing charges against the 8-year-old but no one in Columbus, Indiana had ever processed a child for a violent crime. Frita was against the charges and finally worked up the nerve to leave her husband, moving with young Julie into the home of her boyfriend.

The fire and the scandal that followed had made the state papers, and a clipping or two had been included in the file Wainwright had faxed. Dobey flipped through the clippings, stopping when he came across a much smaller article at the bottom of the pile. It said "Donotelli Father Skips Town". The article consisted of a single paragraph detailing the anti-climactic end to a trial that never was.

After all, why would the prosecution press charges if the complainant was gone?

Julie, Frita and the boyfriend, a car mechanic named Matt Rode, maintained peaceful anonymity until Julie ran away from home at the age of fourteen.

Under that brief juvenile file was a handful of miscellaneous police reports.

The first was a death certificate for a Frita Donotelli Rode, death by suicide, a gunshot to the head. Dobey checked the date of death against the other files, jotting down notes. Julie's adoptive mother had died a few days before Julie was reported as a run away.

The second file was a missing person's report for John Donotelli that had been updated a year prior.

The update was at the bottom in all capital letters. "MISSING PRESUMED DEAD"

Attached was a list of evidence that had been filed over the course of the long search for the man. They had found the vehicle he had taken when he disappeared, his belt, wallet and shoes, and bone fragments and blood that matched his blood type. All that was missing was a body.

The final file was out of place. An injury report from the fire that Julie had reportedly started. Dobey was shuffling the file to its chronological spot when he noticed the circle indicating the general location of the injury. Second degree burns, it said, over a localized region of the body.

The circle indicated that John Donotelli had been severely burned around his hips and groin.

Dobey sat in the chair in the corner of Starsky's room, papers and files spilling from the rolling tray, jotting notes through most of Tuesday morning. When he left the hospital it was with the request that he be notified if there were any changes in the conditions of the three policemen in the hospital's care.

He grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the commissary at the station, then went to his office, shuffling through the pile of paperwork and clearing his desk, constantly distracted by the plain brown folder he'd stuck in his middle drawer.

Before he could return to it Bonnie called. Hutch had awakened briefly. It had been far ahead of schedule and most of the staff was concerned at the temperature and blood pressure spikes they'd registered right before. Hutch had tried to speak several times asking about his partner, about the Met's scores, and spookiest of all, about the same "Clare" that Starsky had been on about.

"How is he now?"

"His white blood cell count is up, which may mean his body is still trying to reject the kidney. The other kidney may still function but only at half capacity. We have to wait and see."

Dobey felt a strong urge to make a suggestion, but he pressed his lips together, knowing how it would sound. Instead, Dobey thanked her and hung up, hesitating a moment before he pulled his middle drawer open and opened the brown file on his now clean desktop.

He stared at the photograph that had been published in the state newspapers. Young Julie featured in the center of the picture, in a coat and dress that went to her knees, wide, round eyes staring around her with feathered lashes making her eyes look even bigger. Her hair, curling in spirals, had been put back in two ponytails.

She stood with one hand in her mother's, the other clinging to a child sized purse. Dwarfed by the adults surrounding her, Julie looked frail and vulnerable, like a rabbit that would scare at any moment. Nothing at all like the woman who had broken Starsky's knee cap with one swing of a baseball bat.

The phone rang in Dobey's office making his heart jump. He caught his breath while he yanked the phone off the hook, instantly afraid it was the hospital calling. He was surprised to hear a hesitant laugh on the other end of the line then, "Heeeey big Dog."

"Huggy?"

"What up, big man?"

Dobey was lost for a moment, trying to place the voice and the man and the reason he'd be calling until he remembered that only two days had passed since Huggy's call alerted him to the trouble his men had been in. Dobey had never called him back with an update, his concerns flying in a hundred other directions.

"Huggy...I'm sorry. I forgot-"

"No problem, big man, no problem. I can assume that all are still in the land of the living?"

"Miraculously, yes. And they wouldn't be if it hadn't been for you, Hug."

"You can skip the commendation this time, Cap, given that it wouldn't fit with the rest of my decor. Let the boys know I'd love to pay them a visit but the time isn't right, if you know what I mean."

Dobey hesitated, digging his way past the double talk until he caught on. "Anything I should know about?"

"No, man. No. But your boys made the paper, and there's a certain kind of clientele that got real excited at the prospect of being minus a couple cops."

The thought of anyone celebrating the death of his officers made Dobey cringe, his hand closing tight enough around the receiver that the plastic cracked.

"I….I suppose I called to postpone that drink the boys and I were gonna have. The Pits is unfriendly at the moment to Starsky and Hutch sympathizers."

Dobey sighed into the phone, knowing the impossible position that a friendship with his two detectives had put Huggy in over the years. "You've done a lot for them." Dobey commented, then added. "Thanks."

"We'll talk again, my man. In a different time and place, dig?"

"I dig." Dobey said, then hung up the phone. He'd have to remember to tell the boys that Huggy had called.

"And as for you, Miss Clare…" Dobey mumbled, looking down at the younger version for a few more seconds before he closed the file and reached for his suit jacket. "Let's have another chat."


	9. Chapter 9

The medical personnel in the hospital were pulled in two different directions at almost precisely the same time. On the isolation floor machines were going crazy indicating spikes in blood pressure, temperature and breathing rate. On the main floor a patient had just disconnected himself from his heart monitor causing the machine to think his heart had stopped.

The nurse that responded to the machines on the main floor rushed into the room in time to see one of the patients helping the other back into bad. The dark haired police officer was leaning hard on the gurney, but seemed stable enough as he tucked the other officer under the blankets.

She thought it was odd that neither made any effort to put the braced leg back into the sling, but her greater concern was for the heart monitor and the IV towers that had somehow become tangled. She worked with the patient who stubbornly stayed on his feet until his fellow officer was comfortable again, then listened, with a blush of her own, to his shy request for help getting to the bathroom.

The officer managed to balance himself long enough to take care of business then washed his hands and poked his head around the edge of the door with another request. He didn't want to bother anyone, and it was absolutely fine if she said no, but it would be just terrific if he could get a wheelchair and get out of the room for a bit. He could roam on his own, he promised, without getting in anyone's way.

Bonnie hadn't told her about how charming Officer Kyle would be. She'd mostly warned about Starsky. But the curly-top Kyle, with his sparkling if bruised smile, and beautiful blue eyes was a killer. The nurse, Stacey, thought Bonnie was crazy.

She found a wheelchair, helped the patient into it, then offered to stay with him for a few minutes. Kyle seemed amenable to that and cautiously asked her if she'd ever worked any of the other floors of the hospital.

She didn't think much about it when they ended up on the third floor, or when Kyle insisted that they go by one of the isolation rooms, still humming with activity. She didn't connect the cessation of panic in the isolation room with their hovering presence outside, and only wondered for a moment or two when Kyle indicated, with his New York brogue, that he'd be fine on his own now.

She pouted a little, but the smile Kyle flashed her was genuine, and caused a sort of ocean wave to roll through her heart, flushing her face. She, somehow, resisted the urge to throw herself at the patient and gave him an ultimatum. Twenty minutes tops, then he was to report back to his room.

"I promise." The patient had told her, with a grin, then she'd left.

* * *

Before Dobey could make it to his car he was stopped by half a dozen officers, clerks and personnel, each asking about Starsky and Hutch while they held papers for him to sign off on, or files to quickly review. He'd worked his way through the explanation more times than he wanted to remember when the final interruption stopped him, minutes from stepping into his car.

"Captain Dobey! Hey...glad I caught ya!"

The man that had run toward him was wearing a set of coveralls that marked him as a police employee. Dobey recognized him vaguely as one of the guys that worked in the police garage. He had a camera in his hand and handed it over before walking away.

"Wait a minute. What is this?" Dobey demanded.

The employee stopped and turned, shrugging, "It was in the GTO your guys borrowed from impound. Must'a left it when they had the car towed."

"Oh." Dobey responded, turning the camera over in his hands before he tucked it into the passenger seat and started the engine. Dobey found himself mildly surprised that he managed to get out of the garage without having a patrol car pull him over for an update.

He told himself to accept that the concern was a good sign and tried to focus on the mental list of questions he planned to ask at county lock up.

When he arrived the same two officers were posted on the outside and inside of the interrogation room. Dobey had the time to introduce himself to Officer White, Officer Speece's male counterpart. They talked until Clare appeared at the end of the hallway, making eye contact with Dobey, but showing no emotions.

"How's she been the past few days?" Dobey asked, once Clare had been secluded in the room.

"Quiet." White shrugged, glancing over his shoulder. "But she's been quiet from the beginning. The most we've had out of her was the last time you were here."

"After I leave…" Dobey said, after a moment of thought. "Put her on suicide watch."

White blinked at him in surprise then asked, "Really?"

Dobey didn't respond, knocking on the door to the interrogation room before he entered.

Through the course of the conversation that followed Clare went from silent prisoner, to dominant seductress, to scared teenager, to warped witch. Her final act had been to lunge toward Dobey, chair and all, trying to bite at the finger he'd let get a little too close to her. Speece had moved a second too late, trying to catch the chair before Clare tipped it, but her balance had already been undone.

Clare hit the floor, her head bounced off the concrete and her eyes rolled back into her skull for a moment, only the whites showing. Dobey had bent to help, even as White had stormed through the door. Together they righted the chair, Speece fumbling with her ring of keys so that she could unlock the cuffs.

Dobey stopped her, barking, "Wait…"

"What...what do you mean wait? She's injured."

Dobey stared at the blank face, Clare's head supported by White's hands while Speece still sorted frantically through her keys. Then he saw the twitch again...the same twitch Clare hadn't been able to control the first time.

He stood back then turned to the door and opened it, searching the halls for jail personnel.

Baffled, Speece found the key for the cuffs and bent to unlock the first link. She'd just fitted the key into the lock of the second link when Clare came back to life, twisting her head and sinking her teeth into White's hand, her free elbow swinging back hard into Speece's chest.

Clare made it out of the interrogation room, but no farther. In the hallway Dobey had already alerted the jail personnel about the possible breakout and they were ready for her. She was cuffed and returned to her cell, and White, with new tooth marks in his hand, was taken to the infirmary for treatment.

Speece stood in the room, her hand pressed to her ribcage watching Dobey as he repeated his order for a suicide watch.

"How'd you know?" She asked.

Dobey wasn't sure how to answer her, but he'd seen a look on Clare's face that reminded him instantly of the face in the newspaper photo. The eight-year-old version's eyes had been wide open, lashes splayed, the picture of innocence...or forced innocence. The look had been complete but for a tight, tense pout to the lips that showed gritted teeth underneath.

The only thing that might have given away a precious 8-year-old as an arsonist, was the sneer her lips had been forming.

Dobey had seen the same look on Clare's face before she lunged, the same tight jawed sneer between White's hands. It made him wonder what else he could learn from eight-year-old Julie, and how far east he'd have to go to learn it.

* * *

Dobey was beginning to solidify travel plans when a call rang through from the hospital. It was Bonnie again, and she was frantic. She'd come on duty to find Starsky missing, and Kyle in his place in the room they'd shared.

Dobey was surprised that Bonnie hadn't immediately checked the most obvious place, and said, "He's with Hutch."

"How can he be? He was sedated!"

"Trust me." Dobey said, then hung up the phone, grabbing his suit jacket and once more heading for the hospital. He didn't bother with Starsky's room, by passing it and heading for the elevators, and the isolation ward.

When he got there Bonnie stood leaning in the doorway, her arms crossed, her head leaning against the jamb. Starsky, capable of sleeping almost anywhere, had found a way to get comfortable in a wheelchair and was sleeping at the foot of his partner's bed.

Dobey leaned against the opposite side of the jamb, a knowing, weary smile on his face.

Bonnie watched him then sighed, "We're just going to have to put them together, aren't we?"

Dobey nodded. "I'll be going out of town for a day or two. I can make you a list of ways to keep the both of them happy and in one spot, if you like?"

Bonnie sighed. "They're like children. Or pets."

Dobey snorted. "Only when they're hurtin'. The rest of the time they're holy terrors." Dobey slipped his arm around Bonnie's shoulders and gave her a supportive squeeze. "You keep them together, they'll turn out alright."

"When will you be back?"

"In a few days. Try to keep Bay City Memorial standing til then."

Bonnie took a deep breath and nodded, not entirely sure she could. She sighed, knowing what could be done about it in the meantime. She asked Dobey if he could watch the two while she went to arrange for a second bed.

It took Bonnie, Starsky's surgeon, two orderlies and Captain Dobey to convince the hospital director and Dr. Dean that moving Starsky in with Hutch would be in the best interest of all concerned. The previous two days were convincing enough on their own, but once Dobey and Bonnie started listing other incidents from other hospitals going back years, Director Chidester put his hands up and conceded the point.

Before Dobey went home that evening, to the reluctant astonishment of each of the medical professionals working with the two men, both were showing marked improvement within hours of being in the same room together. Starsky was less restless, sleeping without sedation, and Hutch no longer experienced the strange spikes in heart rate and temperature. It made no medical sense, but putting the two together had been the final part of the puzzle.

* * *

Before Dobey left he made a mistake. Returning to his car, after the frantic, rush to the hospital, he'd noticed the camera still sitting on his passenger seat. He rewound the film canister, ejected it and sat in his car with half-a-roll of used film and what turned out to be Starsky's camera.

The camera had been in the GTO that his men had used for a partial stakeout at the library. It was possible that there was evidence on the film that might help seal up the case. With that in mind, Dobey tucked the film into his pocket and, when he returned to the station, asked that the film be developed, and the photos and negatives be placed into evidence.

He was preoccupied with the preparations for his short trip out to Indiana, and didn't think about the one comment he should never have made. He should never have told the developer that the person behind the shutter had been Detective Starsky.

Dobey was focused on other things. He had to make hotel arrangements, plane ticket arrangements, rental arrangements and all of it had to be approved by the department. He only had a few days so he had to make sure each of the people he wanted to interview would be there, and that the Columbus, Indiana police department had the equipment he would need to properly collect and preserve any evidence he came across.

His flight back would be landing only a few hours before Officer Logan's burial, and he had agreed to be one of the men carrying the coffin. Edith would meet him at the church, his blues in hand, she promised, and if all went well Dobey could finish his week out with a bail hearing and a deposition.

Clare would be in jail, arraigned until trial and his men could focus on recovery. A long, arduous, hope filled recovery.

That was how Dobey left things when Edith kissed him goodbye at the airport.

It was not how Bay City was when he returned.


	10. Chapter 10

Warning: Some images may be disturbing.

* * *

Friday morning dawned bright and wet. Early morning rain had washed everything clean and the plane landed, screeching through puddles on the tarmac before gliding to a stop at the gate. His flight had arrived as scheduled, and other than losing one piece of luggage, Dobey's trip had been a hard won success. He met Edith outside his gate, changed into his blues in the airport restroom, then guided his wife to their car.

With Edith in funeral black, and Dobey in a uniform he hated wearing, because he only wore it to depressing occasions, the couple arrived at the church on time. They sat through the brief memorial service, and Edith stood with Logan's girlfriend and mother, while her husband helped carry the flag draped body to the hearse.

They followed the short funeral train to the cemetery and her husband and five other officers lowered the coffin to the metal apparatus that would finally intern Officer Logan.

Dobey tried to focus on the preacher's droning voice at the graveside service but the previous few days had been a whirlwind of revelations. His briefcase was so full of evidence tapes and paper copies of police reports, evidence photos and witness interview transcripts that he'd had to check the bag, instead of keeping it with him on the plane. Still, he'd opened enough closed closets, and found enough skeleton's packed away in them, he knew he had a solid case against Clare.

The problem was, the best evidence he had, the tape of his interview with Clare's step-father Matt Rode, hadn't fit in the briefcase. He'd had a copy made of it in Columbus, then asked that the copy be held there while he transported the original in his luggage. His briefcase had made it back to Bay City, his personal luggage had not.

His brief attempt at finding the baggage before leaving the airport had been fruitless. His disappointment in losing the first tape, combined with launching directly into a funeral after a sleepless flight, gave him a mildly paranoid feeling. It was a sad occasion and the week had been a hard one for all concerned, but Dobey felt there was more going on.

He frequently caught, or thought he was catching, surreptitious glances from the other officers. Kyle was in attendance, but hadn't been physically capable of carrying the coffin. Dobey's grim duty kept him from speaking to Kyle until after the internment, and by that time the man seemed drained. His responses were terse and laden with remorse, and then Kyle left with his family.

Dobey attributed the officer's attitude and strain to the long week and tried to let it go. He dropped his wife off at their home, promising that he would be back as soon as he had visited his men in the hospital and settled things in his office.

When he got to the hospital, instead of finding Starsky and Hutch in the same room, well on their way to recovery, he found Hutch alone on the isolation floor, shrouded by an oxygen tent, a sickly sun-yellow color.

Bonnie was off-duty, as was Stacey and Dr. Dean. The only medical personnel that could be reached was the surgeon Starsky had been assigned. Dr. Lewis gave him a fish-eyed gleam of triumph when Dobey knocked on his office door.

"I suppose you're looking for your man, Starsky?" Lewis asked, eagerly rising from his desk, a stack of patient charts in his hands.

"It was my understanding that he was to remain immobile until Saturday."

Dr. Lewis took a deep breath and sighed happily. "Yes that was the plan, but given Mr. Starsky's previous displays of violence and the danger he posed to the nurses, we felt it was best that he be held in a different facility."

"What?" Dobey demanded, his face instantly flooding with crimson.

Dr. Lewis' face flushed as well, and he kept his distance, but he was clearly enjoying the hand he held over Dobey. "In fact, I'm surprised that you weren't here to arrest the man yourself, but...I understand you left town before all the evidence came to light."

The accusation was there, but remained unspoken, and Dobey thought carefully about his words before he asked, "Where is my man?"

"Bellevue, I think. In solitary. He was strapped to a gurney and screaming like a wild man when he left here."

Dobey walked away before he could respond the way he wanted to. He resisted the urge to return to Hutch's floor, knowing there was nothing he could do for Hutch, yet loathe to leave him on his own. He was nearly to his car in the parking garage of the hospital when he noticed the two dark sedans parked either side of his brown Ford. The pinched, bird-like faces of IA's Simonetti and Dryden waited in the dim light of the garage, the two officers leaning against twin cars, waiting for him.

Dobey stopped in his tracks and felt his heart sink. Both IA men looked too happy, too pleased with themselves, too well dug in. Dobey resumed his pace, walking like a man determined to face the gallows with courage.

Neither of the cars were blocking his, but Simonetti's car was too close to Dobey's for the captain to open his driver's side door.

"Move your car, Simonetti."

"We'd like to have a conversation first." Simonetti said.

"Unless it's about the death of Officer Logan, Internal Affairs has no business with me or my men." Dobey bit back.

"You've visited your Officer Hutchinson. You have to know that Starsky is now in custody." Dryden said, arms crossed over a brown jacket that was free of lint, wrinkles, or any other sign of wear. Dobey, still in his blues, hated the jacket and desperately tried not to hate the man wearing it.

"I've heard a rumor...that _you've_ done a damned good job of spreading around. I plan to follow through on that rumor and talk to my man, make sure he's receiving proper medical treatment. Then we can talk."

"Starsky isn't allowed visitors." Simonetti said. "His behavior has been too violent."

"Who says?" Dobey barked, quaking with anger.

He'd known Simonetti and Dryden had been laying low the past few years, biding their time. Waiting for an inkling of a rumor against their least favorite police detectives. Dobey didn't know if it was the sucker punch Starsky had dealt Simonetti, or the way his men duped Dryden. Maybe it was that Dryden and Simonetti had nothing better to do with their time but dream up revenge on Starsky and Hutch. Dobey had expected that eventually the two IA men and the detective partners would have it out.

He hadn't expected Simonetti to stoop so low as to drag a wounded man from his hospital bed.

"I've got a court order, Captain." Simonetti said. "No one, who has seen the evidence against him, is to visit Sergeant Starsky. No one is to have any contact with him outside of Bellevue personnel for the next 24 hours. So the question is...do you want to hold Starsky's hand or let him face the music like a big boy?"

It felt like extortion. It felt like a deal with the devil. It felt like a witch hunt. The trade off, the Catch 22, became letting Starsky rot alone at Bellevue so that Dobey could see the evidence, or supporting his man emotionally while rendered blind and deaf.

At the back of the metaphorical corner Dobey was being forced into, was the irrational fear that the longer Starsky and Hutch were apart, the greater the risk that they would lose them both. Dryden and Simonetti were literally killing two birds with one stone. One giant, slimy, ugly stone that Dobey hadn't seen coming.

"Everybody in this hospital seems to know. The only thing your court order did was prevent the information from leaving the state!" Dobey barked.

Simonetti smiled. "If you sign a statement that says you're aware of the stipulations concerning Starsky's arrest, you'll have free access to all the evidence we've gathered against the officer. You'll be asked to testify at the hearing tomorrow, once you've been thoroughly brought up to speed."

"What hearing?"

"To drop the charges against Clare Donovan. She's already been released into the custody of a local women's shelter."

Simonetti took a step closer, trying to take advantage of the foot height difference between himself and the captain. "I told Starsky I'd see him again. This time he got stupid. If I could take him down with his partner I would. But getting Starsky off the streets is a big win for the good guys, Captain. It's time you accepted that."

"I don't like you in my space, Simonetti. I don't like breathing the same air you breathe." Dobey said, watching with some satisfaction, as a glob of spittle splattered against Simonetti's lapel. The captain turned, just enough to let Dryden see his profile, then looked back to Simonetti.

"We find out that you tried to cover any of this up, Dobey. You won't have to worry about breathing our air ever again." Dryden said from behind him. "We don't make prison visits."

* * *

Saturday morning the courtroom was filled with witnesses, lawyers and cops. Simonetti and Dryden sat near the front behind the table reserved for Clare Donovan and her attorney, a man named Walter Forrest. Dobey sat alone behind the table reserved for Sergeant Starsky and the DA.

Dobey's eyes were bloodshot and burning. It had been another long, sleepless night at the end of a string of nights just like it. He and the DA had spent hours pouring over the disgusting array of accusations and so called evidence against Starsky. There were charges being leveled against Hutch too, but the hearing today wasn't about new charges, but dismissing old ones.

When Starsky was led in, pale in prison orange, he had been cuffed to the pair of crutches he needed to get around. He was shaky, obviously disoriented and in pain. A psych ward, holding a prisoner for the city, only had so much obligation when it came to keeping a prisoner comfortable. In addition to the strain on his detective's face, Dobey could have sworn that Starsky had new bruises on his arms and face.

While Starsky stood, waiting for the officers with him to release the cuffs and take the crutches away, Dobey stood close enough to exchange the first words he'd had the chance for since he'd left Bay City.

"Starsky.."

"Hutch ok?" Was the first and only thing Starsky said.

Dobey sighed and watched Starsky's eyes fall a little before he nodded, turned with his hands cuffed in front of him, and sank into his chair.

Clare was brought in next, wearing tan scrubs. She leaned, as though too weak to walk on her own, against the supporting arms of a wild haired woman in paisley and yellow. The women's shelter advocate sent a glare toward Starsky then used her body to shield the detective from Clare's view as they took their seats.

Dobey had studied Clare's face from the moment she walked in, recognizing the purse to her lips. The gritted teeth behind the pout. It wouldn't convince the judge of anything, but it confirmed Dobey's suspicions. Clare was behind this, all of it, and knew exactly what she was doing.

The bailiff and judge entered quickly and court was brought into session. The judge, T. Haydn,studied the room as its occupants settled.

"The question on the docket today is the following. Can the defense, represented by Mr. Forrest, bring forth evidence that puts reasonable doubt on the charges with which Ms. Donovan has been held, specifically premeditated intent to cause bodily harm to an officer of the law, coercion in the causing of harm to an officer of the law, directly causing grievous harm to an officer of the law, negligent manslaughter, and three counts of false imprisonment. These are the charges you wish to have removed from Ms. Donovan's arrest record, yes, Mr. Forrest?"

"Yes, your honor." Forrest responded, taking the time to stand up before he responded, then sitting again.

The judge gave the man a slow blink, then looked back down to his docket. "DA McCallister, are you prepared to defend these charges?"

"I am, your honor." The DA said, remaining standing.

"Please proceed."

The DA's truncated recounting of the past month or so took a minute. The drug evidence Dobey's men had gathered had only a tertiary pertinence to the deal gone bad and car chase on the previous Friday, the attack against his men the previous Saturday, and the hostage situation in the library on Sunday.

The county's case began with sworn statements from the three librarians, and a statement made a week ago by Clare's goon, Willy. Dobey got on the stand to attest to the state of the library and his men when he arrived on the scene.

The physical evidence the DA had to offer included the baseball bat, complete with blood tests that showed it had been used against a person with the same blood type as both Jessie, and Hutchinson; the doctor's reports and x-rays for Starsky, Hutchinson and Jessie that showed injuries consistent with a beating from a baseball bat; the blood stained clothes Clare had been wearing that day with matching blood type different from her own; and the slew of case files and witness testimonies that Dobey had collected in Indiana.

Dobey's bag was still lost in transit, along with the better of his suit jackets and the testimony of Clare's stepfather, but the DA and Bay City PD had brought everything else to bare, with McCallister there to lay it out in a business-like manner.

The last person to give evidence was Starsky. As planned, the DA requested that the detective, as the result of his injury, be permitted to give testimony from where he was. The judge agreed without hesitation and sat back prepared to hear much of what had already been said, all over again.

Starsky told the story of his participation in the events of Sunday, from realizing that something was wrong in the library because of the absence of a usual patron on the stoop, to watching Clare hold Jessie's head still while he suffocated to death.

Through the entire retelling Clare sat pale faced and shaking, bursting into tears were dramatically appropriate but clenching her jaw and lifting her head again bravely after every outburst. The women's advocate could be heard through the whole ordeal, whispering reassurances to her charge.

By the time Starsky had finished he was sweating, his arms were quaking against the armrests of the chair, desperately trying to stay upright despite the pain that was no longer being masked by pain killers.

The judge seemed distracted by it, but pushed ahead, nodding briefly to the bailiff. A man with the name of Jones on a plaque, pinned to the breast pocket of his uniform came over to the DA's table bending toward Starsky. Dobey leaned in putting a supportive hand on Starsky's vibrating shoulder.

"What's the matter, son?" Jones asked quietly, looking to the DA and Dobey in the same moment.

Starsky closed his eyes tightly for a moment, dragged a breath in and quietly said, "They stop giving you good painkillers when they hear you're being accused of raping a twenty-one-year-old."

Dobey swore under his breath. He wouldn't have expected Simonetti to go so low as to start the smear campaign inside the hospital that was holding Starsky. But then Dr. Lewis had clearly known more than his share. Dobey should have guessed Bellevue would find out.

"We need to get him to a hospital." Dobey hissed through gritted teeth.

"No, I wanna stay." Starsky insisted, panting softly.

"You're sweating through your shirt, Starsky. You look like you're about to pass out-"

DA McCallister interrupted, shaking his head. "Dobey, if your man isn't here to respond to the questions Donovan's attorney has for him, they can say anything they want to the judge and it will take that much longer to convince him otherwise. The sooner we nip this in the bud, the better."

"Besides, the sooner we shut up those nut jobs, the sooner I can get to Hutch-"

"Bailiff." The call came from the bench, the single word cutting Donovan's attorney off mid-sentence. Jones gave Starsky one last sympathetic look then stood and walked to the front of the bench. The conversation between the officer of the court and the judge took a single minute, then the bailiff stepped away.

Judge Haydn sat at his bench writing for another minute, filling a single page with scribble before he handed it off to the bailiff. Jones left the room and Judge Haydn turned back to Donovan's attorney.

Without any hint of apology for the interruption he said, "You may continue."

"As I was saying…" Forrest began, "It is my intention today to have the charges of negligent homicide, premeditated coerci-"

"This is a hearing, Forrest, not a jury trial, don't waste my time." Haydn said.

"Very well…" Forrest hesitated, struggling for a moment to regather his thoughts. "I'd like to ask Clare Donovan to the stand."

"Mr. Forrest, as you can see my bailiff has left the room and isn't available to swear in any witnesses. Have you any other evidence to bring before the court that doesn't require his presence?"

Dobey sat back, surprised, a slow smile threatening to break across his lips.

Clare's attorney started to hunt through the piles of papers on the table in front of him, hemming and hawing. Clare was squirming in her seat and Dryden and Simonetti exchanged a glance before glaring toward the men hunched around Starsky.

"Forrest, you're new to my courtroom, and are therefore not aware. I won't drop charges based entirely on the testimony of the accused. "He said, she said" is one of those arguments they teach us not to get into at judge school."

There was a small ripple of snide laughter that went through the gathering at the back of the courtroom.

"Most of the evidence I have, relies on the testimony of my witness...your honor." Forrest finally blurted.

"In that case we will have to postpone this hearing." Haydn said, raising his gavel.

Before it could land Simonetti had shot to his feet and shouted, "Wait a minute!" Without preamble the sneering man grabbed Forrest's sleeve and yanked the attorney close enough to force harsh whispers into his ear. Forrest squirmed then started to argue vehemently, and Simonneti's mannerisms grew more vicious.

When they finally broke apart Simonetti shoved Forrest back toward the table top strewn with information and hissed, "Do it!"

Forrest straightened his jacket, pulled his collar away from his throat and said, "Your honor, the defense would like to enter the following photographs into evidence. They are...highly sensitive in nature and depict an act of violation against my client by a person matching the description of Detective Sergeant Starsky."

The judge sat back and pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing. He sat for a long time, staring Forrest down, then Simonetti and Dryden. He only glanced at Starsky who had since turned sideways in his chair, trying to relieve the raw pain his leg, his orange jumpsuit soaked through with sweat.

Finally the judge looked at Dobey. "Captain Dobey, District Attorney McCallister, Sergeant Starsky, have all of you seen these photos? If you so attest, please answer "yes"."

"Yes." Dobey said, feeling a familiar sickness in his stomach.

"Yes." McCallister echoed, dropping his chin to his chest for a moment.

"No." Starsky managed, surprising most in the room.

"I believe Sergeant Starsky has the right to view evidence that may be used against him, prior to its use in court. Mr. Forrest, why was Sergeant Starsky not given time to view this evidence?"

"H-h-he's been unconscious, sedated up until a few hours ago."

"How do you know this, Mr. Forrest?" The judge asked.

"I…" Forrest looked behind him to Simonetti and Dryden then looked back to the judge. "I was told."

"By whom?"

Forrest's gaze fell to the table and he stood stalling for a moment, wishing he hadn't let Simonetti push him into using the photos so soon.

"Answer the question, Mr. Forrest."

"By Officers Simonetti and Dryden."

"Mr. Forrest, you chose not to follow through on your professional obligation to this court, and wasted my time, based on the medical expertise of two officers from Internal Affairs?"

Forrest's head dropped to his chest again and remained there.

"For that matter, Officers Simonetti and Dryden, if Forrest's assertion is true and you have been made aware of Detective Starsky's medical condition and treatment, I can only assume that you, knowingly, allowed a prisoner to suffer undue discomfort while still in your legal custody."

Simonetti opened his mouth, a finger straying toward where Starsky was sagging against his chair, but he couldn't get a protest out before the judge asked, "Forrest, aside from the testimony of the accused, and the evidence that has been rendered inadmissible because of lack of due process... do you have anything to present to this court that might shed reasonable doubt on the charges against Ms. Donovan?"

Forrest shot an angry glare over his shoulder, pinning Simonetti to his chair, then tapped his fingers against the table in stalled frustration and said, "No, your honor."

"Do you plan to appeal?" The judge asked.

Forrest glanced sideways to his client then jolted forward a bit, his eyes closing when Simonetti hit his shoulder. "Yes, your honor."

"Then you have two hours to draw up the paperwork." Haydn said, leaning back in his chair, his hand closing around the gavel. "Until my bailiff is able to return, and this officer has received proper medical care and has been offered a chance to view all the evidence being used against him, this hearing is in recess." The gavel came down and the officer at the back of the courtroom opened the double doors letting in the ambulance crew that the bailiff had been sent to call.

The gurney was rushed down the side aisle and Starsky helped onto it before the bailiff directed them into a small ante chamber.

There was room enough for the bed and three chairs, two of which had to be removed so that the EMTs could work. Authorized to provide fluids and Darvocet, the EMTs worked quickly to get Starsky more stable. By the time the EMTs left, exiting the room to give Starsky and Dobey privacy, Starsky was a weak, panting mess lying on his side on the gurney.

The bed had been pushed against the far wall, the IV of fluids hanging from a nail that had been supporting a painting. They would have to return the painting to its nail when they left.

The knock came a few minutes later and the bailiff poked his head in. "Exhibits A through F for the defense. I'll be right outside the door, just knock when you're done." Jones said, then handed a stack of folders into the room.

Starsky dragged his eyes open long enough to acknowledge Jones' presence then snapped them closed again.

"When was the last time you got a decent night's sleep?"

"Two weeks ago." Starsky said, mumbling, but with little hesitation.

"I think you should look at these." Dobey said.

"Just tell me…" Starsky slurred.

"Starsky...these photos were on the film of your camera. The camera was in the GTO that you got from impound. It's damning stuff, you need to look at them."

Starsky's eyes popped open and Dobey realized they were bloodshot and wet. They hadn't had a lot of opportunities to talk about the case, or Clare since the whole thing began. The look in Starsky's eyes reminded the captain of weeks ago, when Starsky would bring up Clare's name and he and Hutch would exchange a look.

Starsky had cared about the girl, on some level, and she was now turning on him.

A shaking arm flopped down on the bed, Starsky's hand open. Dobey put the stack of developed photos into his hand and watched Starsky flip through them.

The whole film had been developed and included, to show that nothing had been edited, removed or added. Every frame had to be accounted for. There were some photos of a Bay City sunrise, buildings, and morning people on the street.

Then a picture of a bare back, a red hand print and a bra strap. Then a picture of the side of a female face pressed against a cracking, black leather seat. Another of the same face, crying, showed the GTO symbol against the door in the background. Then the face, a hand over her mouth, the hand sporting a designer pinky ring. The ring Starsky regularly wore on his left hand.

The rest showed more detail and became more risque and gruesome. The point of the photos was obvious. The subject wasn't consenting, the photographer was taking advantage in every way, filming the act as it happened.

Toward the end, before the photos were the blank black of empty frames, Clare must have "stolen" the camera and taken a blurry photo of her attacker.

It was, in fact, the only blurry photo in the bunch. There was a puff of curly hair and a dark angular face, the sunlight behind it making the face hard to identify, but with Clare's verification that it had been Starsky, and a comparison of the ring in the photo to the ring that Starsky always wore, it would seem that the photos were conclusive.

"What else have they got?" Starsky asked, sounding more coherent, and more drained.

"The long haired drug buyer and the green sedan that you and Hutch chased out of the garage…"

"What about it?"

"Simonetti and Dryden found both, based on a tip, pushed off a pier on the south side. The blonde OD'd and drowned. The tipster said he would testify to seeing you push the car into the ocean."

Carefully Starsky worked at sitting up, nodding his head.

"The blonde guy-" Dobey continued.

"Pete." Starsky said, the name suddenly popping into his memory. "He's the one that stabbed Hutch."

"He'd been dead since Saturday night."

"She got rid of him fast." Starsky muttered, working until his back was against the wall.

"Clare's claiming that he was a witness to the...to the attack. And that's why you got rid of him."

Starsky's face was closed around the pain that, even dulled by the Darvocet, had awakened in the raw edges of bone and torn ligaments.

Dobey watched his man closely. "She's got a reason for every move she's made since Saturday. But none of it is any good without these photos "proving" what you did to her."

"I didn't do it."

"Starsky, I know that." Dobey said.

"No...Cap...I'm left handed. I take photos with my left hand. I have a left handed camera with the shutter button on both sides. I couldn't take a picture this clear, with just my right hand, if my life depended on it. Besides if I was taking photos while I was…" Starsky swallowed back the rise of his stomach and leaned his head back against the wall for a minute. "All of these photos are crystal clear. She's crying but she's not fighting, she's not moving. She's posing. The only blurry photo is the one _she_ took, because it _had_ to be blurry, because this _isn't_ me!" Starsky held the final photo up then tossed it at the pile.

McCallister knocked on the door a second later and glanced in. He caught the distressed, but less pained look on Starsky's face, the scatter of photos on the gurney, the IV hanging from a nail then looked to Dobey. "You're smiling."

"You should be, too." Dobey said, then repeated what Starsky had just said.

"How do we prove you're left handed."

"I'll write something."

McCallister shook his head. "It's a start, but it's something the defense could contest."

"With Simonetti pounding on his shoulders, Forrest would contest the moon."

"Judge Haydn doesn't strike me as the patient type. He didn't just postpone the hearing, he made Forrest refile appeal papers." Dobey said.

McCallister nodded, "I've never seen a judge intentionally send his bailiff out of the room, then let the hearing continue and refuse a witness. Technically he can do it, but most would have wanted to keep the process moving. Haydn's making life hard for Forrest." McCallister went silent for a moment then looked to Starsky. "When did they cut you off from the pain meds?"

"Twenty-four hours ago. They were givin' me pills, but the good stuff went out the window once the hearing date was set."

"Judge's orders?" McCallister asked.

Starsky shrugged.

"It might have been at your expense, but I think we've got a guardian angel in the justice department. The "appeal" starts in an hour. Rest up."

"I'd rather make a phone call." Starsky said, glancing to his captain.

It took Dobey a minute but he nodded. "I'll ask the bailiff."

Ten minutes later Starsky had been cuffed to his crutches again, and with Dobey trailing behind him with the IV bag, an escort of two police officers and Simonetti protesting down the hall, Starsky stood at the bank of payphones in the lobby and made his call.

Dr. Dean answered after the first ring and lifted the plastic so that he could place the phone near the ear of the unresponsive patient.

"Hey Hutch...listen, buddy I got about half-an-hour and a pocket full of dimes. I got a lot to tell ya, so hush up."

For a solid half-hour Starsky talked. A little about the case, and the recent events that had pulled him from his partner's side, but mostly about their plans after. With a blind optimism that denied that Starsky could be incarcerated for life, or worse, and that denied that Hutch's body could reject the kidney and he could be dead before Starsky saw the light of day again, Starsky prattled on about trips and holidays and movies and roller rinks and anything else he could pull from thin air until he ran out of dimes, and the bailiff tapped his watch.

"I gotta go put bad guys away, Hutch. And I gotta tell ya I'm not too happy with having to do all the work in this partnership. Quit messin' around with that kidney and get better. Nurses don't like yellow." Starsky took a breath then swallowed and said, "Me and thee, don't work with only me. I-"

The operator cut him off, asking for another dime. Starsky fought hard to control himself, then let the handset swing loose from his shoulder. He and the officers assigned to him went one way and Dobey and McCallister the other, separated for the ten minutes it took to get settled in the courtroom.

Then the gavel came down and the fastest appeal ever processed began.


	11. Chapter 11

Before Dobey re-entered the courtroom he made a phone call of his own. It took him ten minutes to finish the call and make arrangements at the main desk. By the time he sat again behind Starsky the judge had already begun the hearing and opened the floor to McCallister.

They rolled through the legal jargon and due process steps once again at twice the speed, and Dobey watched Forrest where he sat squirming, checking and rechecking the notes in front of him, aware that this was his last opportunity to save face with Judge Haydn.

Once they established that all parties had seen the evidence the defense planned to enter, Forrest, with an exaggerated sigh, presented the photos to the judge.

The courtroom sat in near silence while the judge flipped through them, making no comment. When he finally handed them back to the bailiff, Forrest drew in a breath to speak, but the judge put up a hand, and sat writing for a few more minutes.

"Exhibit G, your honor," Forrest continued, once the judge's hand had rested once more on the bench. "The ring shown in several of the photos is identical to this ring, taken from the personal property of Sergeant Starsky following his arrest."

Forrest waited this time, expecting another lengthy session of note taking, but Haydyn merely glanced at the ring and gave it back to the bailiff, giving Forrest an annoyed look.

Dobey and McCallister exchanged glances, certain that Haydn was toying with the attorney intentionally, but they kept their faces blank.

"Exhibit H, I, and J are detailed photographic exposures taken from exhibits A-F that establish that the vehicle was the same as the 1966 GTO convertible that Sergeant Starsky requisitioned from the Bay City Police Department Impound lot on the evening of May 18th."

The new photos got a tempered sigh from the judge and Forrest scrambled to get through the rest of what he had to show.

"Exhibit K, your honor. Lab reports initiated by Officers Simonetti and Dryden that show that an unidentified substance found on the seat of the GTO is semen."

The judge glanced at the lab report and kept it longer than the last few items, before handing it to the bailiff, his hand in the air again. Forrest waited until the hand fell and said, "The defense would now like to call Ms. Clare Donovan to the stand."

Dobey heard Starsky's chair creak and glanced toward his man. Starsky had begun to sweat again but his face wasn't showing the same strain it had before. He was pale, but not overwhelmed by physical pain. The pain of the mire he was about to be dragged through was entirely different.

Clare was sworn in and sat primly in the chair, staring forward. She was as wide eyed and innocent as the photos of her younger self, her eyes trained solely on Forrest.

"Ms. Donovan, you've been made aware of the charges against you?"

"Yes."

"The charges we're here to contest, today, you understand what each of them means?"

"Yes."

"And you feel that you aren't guilty of these charges-"

"Objection, leading the witness." McCallister called, without rising.

Haydn lifted a hand and said, "Sustained."

"Are you guilty of these charges, Ms. Donovan?"

"No."

"Would you tell us, in your own words, what occurred on the afternoon of Saturday, May 19th?"

Clare swallowed and nodded, then began to tell a story of a perfectly innocent mistake. She had followed Hutch out of the library, she said, hoping to return something to him that he had dropped in his haste to leave for lunch. She was surprised to see him duck into an old car with someone else she recognized…

"Is that man in the courtroom today?"

"Yes."

"Can you point him out to the court?"

Clare pointed and Starsky's jaw jumped, but he kept his head up.

"Let the record show that Ms. Donovan has indicated Detective Sergeant Starsky as the man she saw in the car with Detective Hutchinson. You may continue."

"I was very surprised to see that they knew each other. Dave…" Clare paused, swallowing dramatically. "...he had made a point of indicating that he didn't know the blonde man. I was curious, and after Hutchinson left to return to the library I went to speak to Dave."

The tears started, Clare swallowing more frequently, and dropping her gaze to her lap.

"What happened then, Ms. Donovan?"

"He...he was angry. He started yelling. He said I was stupid and I was going to blow his cover. He...forced me into the car. I told him I wouldn't tell anyone, that I didn't even know what was going on. He said...he had a way to make sure I wouldn't tell anyone and...he-" Clare started to become hysterical, but her movements weren't orchestrated anymore.

Her arms had lost their delicate poise, her head twitching away from Starsky and toward Forrest. Her eyes narrowed, her gaze lost somewhere in the past before the act went out of her voice, the tears dried and Clare said plainly, "He raped me."

"What else did he do, Clare?" Forrest asked, gently.

"Over and over. Every night. I didn't know what it was." Clare's head tilted to the side and her voice took on a lighter, more childlike quality. "I didn't know why. He said he was loving me. Like he loved her."

"Ms. Donovan?"

Clare's head came up and she blinked, the doe-eyed expression back on her face. She stared at Forrest, slack jawed and he asked again, "What else did Sergeant Starsky do?"

"H-he hit me." She said, her face still slack, stunned, struggling to regain the momentum she'd lost.

"And then what?"

Starsky, Dobey and McCallister watched her lose herself.

"He was drinking." Clare said. "He was drunk and sloppy and crying." Each adjective brought more hate and disgust into Clare's voice, the skirt of her tan smock so twisted in her fingers that she was cutting off circulation to her fingertips.

Forrest was stuttering. "Uh...S-sergeant Starsky was drink-"

"He always drank. It was the only way he could get it up." Clare's voice had risen to an insistent volume that projected her voice around the courtroom. There was no mistaking what she was saying. "He figured that's why Ma was always gone. He couldn't get it up for her, so she went to someone else and he was stuck at home...with me. The pipsqueak he couldn't sire on his own."

Forrest's mouth hung open, and he cast a concerned look over his shoulder. Both Dryden and Simonetti were as baffled and surprised as he was. "Y-your honor, can I request a brief recess?"

Haydn glanced to Donovan's attorney, his face awash with the disturbing testimony Clare was giving, aware that it wasn't what Forrest had in mind, but equally aware that it was precisely what the people in that courtroom had come to hear, including Clare.

"Justification?" He asked, simply, raising his brows.

"Um…" Forrest tried to think of a way to say that his client was clearly crazy, without accidentally perjuring her in some way. "I'd like to confer with my client in a less...strenuous environment."

Judge Haydn looked to Clare. Her head had dropped and she'd noticed the condition her hands and skirt were in. She'd unwound the cloth and tried to straighten it against her knees, her movements exaggerated, like a child not yet accustomed to how quickly she was growing.

"How brief?" Haydn asked.

"Ten minutes, your honor."

"Very well." Haydn agreed. At the pound of the gavel Forrest, Simonetti, Dryden and the women's advocate rose from their chairs and hustled Clare out of the witness box and into the ante room on their side of the courtroom.

Dobey blinked at how quickly DA McCallister turned on him. "Tell me you know what's going on here, Harold."

Dobey stared wide-eyed at him, then looked to the ante room door. "You're lookin' at a police captain, not a psychologist."

"You spent two..three days in her hometown, digging into her past. What's your best guess?"

"This is about her father." Dobey said. "Her adoptive father. He was accused of statutory rape but the case never went to trial, and at the time there was so much concern about the bad press it was gainin' for the town, Clare...Julie was treated by a counselor for two years and remained in her parents custody. It was covered up." Dobey said, meeting Starsky's clear blue eyes as he finally looked up.

"She set her father on fire." Starsky said, squinting.

Dobey leaned forward, surprised. "How-"

"She told me." Starsky said. "Before all..this. She and I would exchange stories out in the stacks. She would tell me about the novel she was working on...and it was all...strange. Fantasy, you know? About a princess taken in by commoners. But the father in the story was always dark, evil. The king tried to sell the princess to slave traders and she...set him on fire trying to escape."

Dobey's lips came together in a grim line and he nodded. "Julie Donotelli, aka Clare Donovan, was accused at age eight, of setting the family home on fire, but the fire marshall told me most of the damage was centered around John Donotelli's den chair. Based on the _hospital's_ report, the fire started in John's lap."

""He was drinking."" Starsky said, his cuffed hands gesturing toward the witness box. "Clare just told us how it happened. John was drinking, spilled on himself, she either accidentally or intentionally tossed a match or a lighter…and the princess escapes. Free of the abusive king, forever."

Dobey shook his head. "Julie and her mom, Frita, left John and moved out, but John wasn't gone. Not until the following summer. Right before the case would've gone to trial, John disappeared."

"You don't think Julie-" Starsky started.

"No. She was still too young then. They found enough evidence to indicate John died of a gunshot wound, probably to the head. A Mob style hit. They had started digging into Donotelli's connections in Illinois when the head of the ATF, out of Chicago, rolled into town, took everything they had on John's disappearance and told them to drop their investigation." Dobey said.

"Chief of police in a little town isn't likely to go over the head of Chicago ATF." McCallister added, getting a nod of confirmation from Dobey. "So...Clare is reliving the trial that Julie never got?"

"According to her step-father, it's not the only time she's had flashbacks." Dobey said, then glanced back toward the double doors at the back of the courtroom as they creaked open. A uniformed porter from the airport was admitted and hurried down the outside aisle toward Dobey, a piece of luggage in his hands.

Even as Dobey was signing the claims ticket, Clare was being lead back into the courtroom. The bailiff guided her onto the stand quietly reminding her that she was still under oath. Clare seemed drained, paler than before, and genuinely unable to stand on her own.

Judge Haydn watched her for a moment then looked to Forrest. "Are we ready to continue, counsel?"

"No, your honor." McCallister interjected. "Forgive the interruption, but the piece of evidence that the prosecution was unable to account for earlier this morning has just arrived. I feel it is in the best interest of the health and well being of Ms. Donovan that this hearing move to the privacy of your chambers, sir."

Haydn's brows rose in surprise and he stared at McCallister for the length of a long sigh, "I suppose, that in the string of bizarre requests today, I shouldn't be surprised to finally receive one from you, McCallister. Justification."

"In the course of this investigation, Captain Dobey conducted an interview with the stepfather of Ms. Donovan, a Mr. Matt Rode. A summary of that interview was included in the evidence that the court and the defense received late yesterday evening, but the rest, the transcript and the tapes of the interview, had been...mislaid...by Western Air. These items were just delivered and indicate a pattern of behavior very similar to what we've seen in the courtroom today. That pattern may end tragically, your honor."

Haydn sat back until his chair squealed, then asked, "Mr. Forrest, do you have any objections to moving this hearing into my chambers, sans the presence of Ms. Donovan?"

Forrest hesitated, his eyes bouncing between the women's advocate who was studying him intensely, the four holes he felt boring into his back from Simonetti and Dryden, and the client he was no longer certain he could trust.

"My client has a right to view any evidence used against her in a cou-"

"Your honor, I am authorized to state, for the record, that at no time during _this_ hearing will the evidence contained in this transcript be used against Ms. Donovan. I'm concerned purely with her well-being." McCallister interrupted.

"Let the record so state." Haydn repeated then looked to Forrest. "Any further objections?"

Forrest's mouth closed and he looked to his table, then sat, quietly saying, "No, your honor." His voice was quiet, but sure. Forrest had come to a decision, but it wasn't clear where his loyalties lay anymore. He sat and took the five page transcript that McCallister held out to him, reading through it quietly and saying nothing more.

Haydn leaned forward in his chair and declared, "Since my chambers will not accommodate the large party that I assume would like to continue to participate in this hearing, we will remain here. But for Sergeant Starsky, Captain Dobey, DA McCallister, Mr. Forrest, Mrs. Kelly-Robinson and myself I would like the courtroom cleared. Bailiff please take Ms. Donovan and Ms. Janeway into the antechamber and see to it that Ms. Donovan is made comfortable."

The gavel came down and the courtroom gradually cleared but for the bodies gathered around the two tables, and the court stenographer hunched over her machine. Dryden and Simonetti's protests were the loudest and first voices to be ignored before the buzz of bodies, heartbeats and voices dwindled to the kind of silence that fills an empty theatre. Void of life, but filled with anticipation.

"DA McCallister…" Judge Haydn prompted.

"Your honor…" McCallister took a deep breath, then continued, straying out from behind the prosecution table for the first time. "We've just heard what might be considered gibberish to someone not familiar with the past of Clare Donovan aka Jewell aka Julie Donotelli, but Ms. Donovan is a storyteller.

Detective Starsky and Detective Hutchinson, both on the record and off, have previously attested to Clare's talent as a writer and an actress. To play a role, an actor has to put aside his or her own tendencies, mannerisms and speech patterns, and become someone else. As Sergeant Starsky well knows, there are plenty of other circumstances that require so complete a divorce from reality."

McCallister paused then gestured to the stacks of case files on the table in front of him.

"An undercover officer, for example, may be at great risk if his cover is exposed by a slip in speech pattern or a wrong move. The psychology reports that Captain Dobey provided previously, indicate that there is still another reason for someone, like Clare, to have to learn to lie or act as convincingly as I believe she can. To preserve sanity, to preserve the mental stability needed to survive a traumatic childhood like that is indicated by the testimony given by Matt Rode."

McCallister walked to the defense table and picked up the transcript, flipping to the third page. "With your permission I'd like to read the following from the aforementioned interview."

Haydn checked for Forrest's assent before he leaned back in his seat and nodded, and McCallister began to read.

"Rode: Julie had these fits. She'd be playing make believe with her dolls, only male dolls, never with the female dolls, and she'd have a tea party going on...but one of the male dolls would spill on himself. She'd start to scream and wail, pounding angrily at the doll before she touched it with her fingers and shouted, "Bodies don't kill." Just those words. "Bodies don't kill." I come home from work one day to find my wife, Frita, in the kitchen cryin'. She said she was scared for Julie and I asked her what was wrong. She pulled a male doll from the trash where she'd hid it. She said Julie had set the doll on fire."

McCallister flipped to the next page and read again.

"Dobey - You said there were two incidents. What was the second?

Rode - There was a boy...in her fifth grade class. Frita had convinced herself that Julie would be fine. That whatever John had done to her wasn't really that bad. She and Julie were getting along finally and then...Julie came home and said that the boy had touched her. Just...out of the blue. It was a boy that we thought she liked, and he liked her back, and then she came home and told us, "Jimmy touched me. Like John used to do. I want him dead." Then she went into her room. An hour later we had a call from the superintendent and the school principal telling us that Julie was being suspended from school.

Dobey - What were they accusing Julie of doing?

Rode - It wasn't just an accusation. She had done it. We went in that evening to a conference with the principal, the police and the boy's parents. We saw the boy's neck. She'd left deep, purple marks with her belt. She'd tried to choke him to death.

Dobey - Did he touch her?

Rode - I don't know if he was lying about how far he'd gone, but he seemed innocent. He...he said he kissed her. On the lips. The way school kids do, you know?

Dobey - Then what happened.

Rode - Then, I think Frita realized. She…(crying)...she was gone the next day, and so was Julie.

Dobey - I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Rode, but for the record, please?

Rode - Frita shot herself. She killed herself because of what she couldn't stop John from doin' to Julie. Julie was home when she did it. She must'a found her mother and then...she ran away."

Judge Haydn sat forward and folded his hands in front of him, the blades of his palms resting on the edge of the bench. He sat quietly in thought, long enough for the voices outside of the courtroom to bleed through faintly.

"Mr. Forrest. Do you have anything further to add on Ms. Donovan's behalf?"

Forrest looked up and resolutely said, "No."

"Do you wish to have her returned to the courtroom for further questioning?"

Forrest didn't rise. He sat at his table thinking about the line of bull he'd been fed by Donovan, Simonetti and Dryden. He knew enough about criminal profiling to see Clare's testimony as a creatively orchestrated lie. Whether they had all been aware of the lies, or only his client, he was looking at his first major criminal case from the business end of a shotgun. With both barrels loaded and the trigger in easy reach. It wasn't how he'd intended to start his career as a criminal defense lawyer.

"Ms. Donovan's behavior today has proven too erratic for me to...in good conscience, continue to expose her to what would seem to be traumatic stimuli." Forrest said carefully, then sighed and closed the folder that was open on the table. "I have already informed Officers Simonetti and Dryden that I do not intend to continue to represent Ms. Donovan." Forrest got to his feet and glanced over to the ragged looking officer. "However, I will stand by my client until his honor has reached a conclusion."

Forrest's lips worked against his teeth, his fingertips tapping the table top as he debated, before adding, "Sergeant Starsky, you weren't the only one left intentionally in the dark."

Starsky met the man's gaze and held it. He didn't nod or look away, and eventually Forrest took a deep breath and focused on the judge.

Haydn slid his pad of notes in front of him. "DA McCallister, despite the alarming turn of events in the past few minutes, some serious allegations remain on the record concerning the officer you represent. Have you any response?"

"Yes, your honor." McCallister said, then launched into a lackluster exposition that, never the less, got the job done. "After viewing the photographs that would seem to indicate Sergeant Starsky's guilt, the sergeant pointed out a key fact. The photographs show a man's left hand, which suggests that the photos, which have exceptional clarity and quality, were taken by someone who is right handed. Sergeant Starsky is left handed. If need be, a demonstration or further documentation to that fact can be provided for the court."

Haydn shook his head and put up a hand.

"To that end, your honor, Sergeant Starsky also pointed out that the clarity of the photos seemed to indicate some measure of either coercion or...cooperation on the part of the victim. Given the violence that Ms. Donovan indicated with her testimony today, it is illogical for the photos, entered as evidence of that violence, to be so well focused."

"Does this reflect your considered and professional opinion, Sergeant Starsky?" Haydn asked.

"Yes, your honor."

"Very well. Anything else?"

"No, your honor."

Haydn's palms came to rest on the bench top, then he stood, prompting Dobey, Starsky and McCallister to stand as well.

Haydn gathered his notes and aligned them with a single tap before he said, "I've been a judge for ten years. Prior to this I was District Attorney for 20 years and before that...I was an eager defense lawyer like you, Mr. Forrest. The more time I spent in courtrooms, defending criminals that I knew were guilty, and a very few that I thought for sure were innocent, the less and less I believed that anything another human being did would surprise me.

When I walked into this courtroom today I was in a hurry. I thought certain I had read each of you right, pegged from the start. I'm...pleased to say that I was wrong...at least, about some of you." There was a tiny quirk in the corner of Haydn's mouth that each of them caught before it disappeared.

"My mother was a librarian. She was fond of telling her patrons to give every book a chance. Never...judge a book by its cover. I've learned that today, again, in spades." Haydn's eyes brightened briefly, then he looked to the DA.

"DA McCallister, I'm pleased to see you do have a dramatic flair after all, but, as always, keep it to a minimum. Captain Dobey, take good care of your men. I plan to make short work of dismissing the charges Simonetti and Dryden have brought against them, and hereby order Sergeant Starsky into your custody.

As to you, Mr. Forrest, I would suggest that you remain with Ms. Donovan. It is not to your benefit to abandon a sinking ship. I am upholding the charges against Ms. Donovan and further, remanding her to psychiatric care until her trial."

Haydn opened his mouth and took in a breath, then dropped his chin to his chest and looked to the witness box. There was always a back story. He'd learned that as a defense attorney and later in the DA's office.

There were always layers hidden by the glossy cover, that as a judge, he rarely got to see anymore. Too frequently the arguments became about technicalities and mistakes, and less about what was right for the victim. The _victims..._ on both sides of the crime. The missing ingredient was a measure of compassion - a sympathetic pity for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. Like what McCallister had shown by using damning evidence to protect an opposing witness, at the risk of his own case. Like what Forrest had shown by accepting what might have been a trick by the prosecution, for the sake of the mental well being of his client.

Haydn brought himself back, meeting the eyes of each of the men still standing in his courtroom. "Court is dismissed, gentlemen."

* * *

They had only just left the courtroom when one of the phones against the wall started to ring. Dobey and McCallister missed it at first, but Starsky zoned in immediately, remembering the dream, or nightmare, he'd had in the hospital. A ringing phone with Hutch on the other end, needing his help.

Starsky used his crutches to rush toward the phones, jerking each receiver off its cradle until the ringing stopped.

"Hello?" He demanded, breathlessly.

"Somebody called me from this number." A voice scratched on the other line, and Starsky's face went from heart-wrenching fear to tear-filled joy in seconds. He gritted his teeth and couldn't stop the smile that took over his face, or the brief wetness in his eyes.

"Damned good to hear your voice, Ollie." Starsky said, his tone breaking a little.

He could hear the smile in Hutch's response, "You too, Gordo. Though I could'a sworn you been here all the time." Hutch's voice was raw, a soft, scrape of a sound, but stronger than it'd been in a long time. "Been hearin' your voice for days. Where've you been?"

"The nut farm." Starsky laughed, wiping the tears from his cheeks. "And the court house."

"Who'd ya get mad at ya, now?"

Starsky still wore the stupid grin, finally attracting the attention of Dobey and McCallister. "Doesn't matter. I'll tell you when I get there."

"Hurry up, will ya. Doc's tryin' to shove more pills at me."

Dobey had started to smile, he recognized the look on his detective's face and knew it generally only applied to one person.

"You mind if I take the time to change out of prison orange?" Starsky asked, glancing down at the jumpsuit he still wore.

"According to Bonnie, I'm still a little pale yellow. Maybe we'll match."

Starsky laughed, a belly laugh that he'd needed for what seemed like years.

"Hey." Hutch said.

"What?"

"Take your own advice, huh? Me and thee ain't nothin' without thee."

"I'll bring you a pizza."

"Don't you dare."


	12. Chapter 12

The doctors and nursing staff were still talking about it the following morning. They were still talking about it a week after it happened. It was a topic of conversation that would come up in the lulls. Anytime there was a rough hour and they'd start to lose faith in whatever they believed in, one of them would stop and smile, or shake their heads, or start to say, "I still can't believe-"

Everyone around them would smile and nod and agree.

Those that had seen it in person were even more amazed by it because of the details that hadn't gotten around. Like the look on Hutch's face when his partner finally answered the endlessly ringing phone. The immediate change in his color when Starsky had let loose a healthy laugh.

It was the health care professional's fairy tale. It was the happily ever after of the world of modern medicine.

And the two men quickly became the golden boys of an entire hospital full of doctors, nurses, clerks, orderlies and technicians.

"It's embarrassing."

"It is not embarrassing."

"You're a walking nightmare." Starsky insisted, keeping at least four feet of distance.

"That's a real...sweet, kind, compassionate thing to say, Starsk." Hutch said from the other side of his IV tower.

Starsky rolled his eyes, then concentrated on navigating a crowd of candy stripers flooding in the opposite direction. He'd finally kicked the crutches, and had been resisting the urge to admit that it was a little too soon. The cane was great, but almost more work. His steps slowed as the last of the stripers went by, a late-twenty-something glancing back at them with red hair, freckles and bright green eyes.

"Starsk.."

"Huh."

"Starsky."

"What?" Starsky whipped his head around and looked to his partner, then wrinkled his nose in disgust again and shook his head. "Can't believe I have to be seen with you."

"Have to...have to be seen? You don't have to be here, Starsk." Hutch protested, smoothing the hand of his casted arm self-consciously down his front.

"Yeah I do. I leave you alone, you'll trip all over your evening gown there and undo a week of work."

"It's not a gown, Starsk, it's-"

"It's a nightgown, Hutch. Worse yet, it's a Mumu. A mumu for men. You're wearing a ManMu."

"A man-" Hutch choked on the rest, his lips forming an unamused pout.

Starsky fought a smile, determined not to break, "I mean you might set a new trend here in the _hospital_. Or maybe a prison infirmary." The last bit did him in and Starsky couldn't help the snort.

His break set his partner off and Hutch brought a premature end to their walk, bracing himself with his free hand gripping the IV tower, laughing so hard his face was bright red. A second later he was pressing the heel of his hand to his back, healing ribs and surgery scars protesting the movement of his diaphragm. There were tears in his eyes and he was desperately struggling to regain control.

Starsky was laughing so hard that at least one nurse and an orderly popped their heads out into the hall. It took them both a solid five minutes to recover, which they did sitting on one of the benches in the hallway.

"Oh God...Manmu." Hutch sighed, wiping at his eyes, then straightening with a wince, panting.

"I suppose you're gonna blame your poor fashion choices on the painkillers." Starsky suggested, straightening the collar of the article in question with just his fingertips, watching his partner closely as Hutch leaned away from the side with all the sutures.

"Wouldn't be the first bad choice somebody made while on powerful drugs. And you know...Bonnie gave me this. I'm gonna tell her you hate it."

"Great, she already thinks I'm a trouble maker."

"You are." Hutch quipped quietly, wincing a little as he settled tiredly against the wall. "Beating up orderlies, escaping from beds, coercing young and impressionable nurses."

"You ask me, she wanted to be coerced." Starsky muttered in protest, stretching his still stiff and aching knee out in front of him. "Besides, Stace and I are getting along great, thanks to my coercion."

"Yeah? No signs of crazy?"

"Funny."

Hutch leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes before he took a deep breath. "I think we gotta face it, Starsk. We attract wild women."

His partner was silent longer than was normal and Hutch opened one eye to find Starsky staring at him.

"You're sitting here, slouched like an old man on his last leg, with your arm in a cast, dressed in a quilted, zebra strip-ed ManMu and you're telling me _we_ attract wild women!?"

"You got that right, big boy." A voice said in a sexy Betty Boop voice that brought a grin to Starsky's face. He rose with grunt that slipped out the side of his mouth and dragged the pretty nurse before him into an embrace, burying a kiss against her neck that made her giggle.

"Hiya, schweethart." Starsky returned, then looked to the bodies that Stacey had been escorting, his face going blank in stages. He shouldn't have been surprised really, but he was. He turned the slack look toward his partner and watched Hutch's smile fall.

The blonde studied the two people standing in the hallway, glanced down at his sprawled position on the bench and straightened the quilted, black and white striped robe he wore over pajama bottoms, then flung his casted arm to the back of the bench and pushed to his feet.

Starsky moved in to help, supporting his partner until Hutch nodded that he had it. Once the hand holding the IV tower was free, Hutch thrust it out toward a male version of himself that promised a receding hairline and a potbelly in twenty or thirty years.

"Dad. Mother."

"Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson…" Starsky greeted, trying not to slur the name together.

"You're uh...you're early. I thought your flight wasn't landing for another three hours." Hutch stuttered.

Hutch and his parents moved down the hall a few steps, and Stacey peered at the group stunned. "No hugs? No tears? No, "So glad you're not dead, son?"

"You gotta have parents that actually communicate with their children for tears and hugs." Starsky said, sarcastically.

"Like...her you mean?" Stacey asked, pointing over Starsky's shoulder.

The brunette turned then swept an old lady into his arms with a cry of delight that mingled with the maternal coo of "David!"

"Ma! How? When?"

"The Hutchinson's called, and told me the truth that you wouldn't tell me…" Rachel Starsky accused, wrinkled fingers jabbing lightly against Starsky's chest, still crushed in her son's embrace. "They were in New York and offered to bring me here to be with my boys."

Starsky squeezed her again, then let her go. "Welcome to the Hutchinson Charity ball…" He quipped, grinning.

" _You_ should be charitable, or you'll be footing the bill."

"You kidding, I'm gonna be providing room and board for Hutchinson Jr in about two days."

"Oh…" Rachel gasped, stepping back a bit. "You're skinny. Both of you boys are skinny." Mrs. Starsky tutted, her arms going around her boy again.

"That's what you get from hospital food." Starsky answered, winking at Stacey who stood apart from the two, delighted at the reunion. "Tell me somethin', you didn't bring Nick with ya?"

The older woman flapped a hand at her first born. "Nick...with his girlfriends and his schemes. Your brother wouldn't leave his "business" for the second-coming."

"There's more than one Starsky?" Stacey piped up, getting a lascivious look on her face.

"Don't even start." Starsky warned, then pulled Stacey back under his arm. "Ma, this is Stacey Newton. She's my girl."

"And his nurse. And the warden. And-"

"I've met her, David. She's told me how bad you've been."

"Can't be worse than my childhood." Starsky said, earning a slap from his mother.

"I have to get back to work, Dave, and you should get Hutch back into bed. He's been up for long enough." Stacey said, checking her watch, before she pecked Starsky on the cheek and pulled away.

"It was lovely meeting you, Mrs. Starsky."

"You'll be over for dinner in a few days. 8:00. David will pick you up." Mrs. Starsky ordered, earning a bright grin from the nurse.

"Ma…it's good to see ya." Starsky pulled his mother back into his side and stood watching his partner. Hutch's casual slouch always disappeared when his parents were around, and he could see the strain on Hutch's face from trying to straighten up, despite the fact he'd just had a new organ put in his body. "But it might'a been better if they'd stayed away." Starsky added.

Mrs. Starsky stroked her son's back, feeling the tension growing there. "Even parents who don't raise their children, worry about them when they're hurting."

Starsky blinked a little, his mother's words echoing in his brain. He thought about Clare as he and Rachel closed the distance to his partner.

Starsky cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the three blonde-haired people in the center of the hall. "Sorry to interrupt but Hutch's been ordered back to his room. Play time's over, buddy."

"You're welcome to join us." Hutch offered, seeming genuinely interested in keeping his parents' company.

They started backing out instantly, insisting that they had to rescue their bags from the taxi still parked outside the hospital. They had to get to their hotel, etc.

Hutch tried to argue and insist they stay at his home but Hutch's father was especially vehement. As they left Starsky thought they almost seemed...guilty.

With his mother holding his cane, Starsky helped Hutch back into his bed, following the routine that they had instantly developed the first day Hutch was allowed up. Starsky pulled a chair over for his mother, then perched on the second bed and the three chatted until Hutch started to wane.

The sudden weariness still came on alarmingly fast, but the doctors had promised that this would improve with time. In three weeks, or six, or eight, Hutch would be back to his old self. The miracle of the human body.

With her aging, but still tough-as-nails arm over Starsky's, the brunette police detective walked his mother out of the hospital and into the setting California sun.

"David...before we go back home. Could we see the ocean?" Rachel asked, and her son held the door of the Torino open for her, tucked her single bag into the back, and turned the car toward the sea.

"Kenneth will be fine." Rachel said, once they'd passed through the bustle of downtown.

"Yeah, he'll be alright." Starsky agreed.

A few miles later Rachel said, "I think Stacey will be good for you."

Starsky laughed softly through his nose and smiled, accepting that some things would never change, "Thanks, ma. I think so, too."

"Now all we have to do is get you out of this _tsuris_ you've stuck yourself in."

Starsky choked on a laugh, then pressed his lips together in a smile and ducked his head under the light from the setting sun. " _Tsuris_...Ma. I'm...I'm a little tired. I got a bum knee. We're not talkin' end of worlds here."

"A mother knows what a mother knows, David. You're in the mire." Rachel said sagely, nodding her head to herself.

Starsky's eyebrows met together over a bump in his forehead and he glanced at his mother before turning into a beach parking lot. He shook his head and pulled the car into a parking space, then carefully got out, focusing on using the cane the way the physical therapist had told him to.

He skirted the rear of the Torino and helped his mother out of the car. She took his arm again and they stepped onto the moderately busy walking path that bordered the beach.

"In the mire." He said finally, resigned to the 'talking to' that a lack of communication with his mother in the past weeks had earned him. "What does that mean?"

"For three weeks, David, you told me everything you knew about a lovely young girl named Clare. You told me she was part of a job, but you liked her. She intrigued you...and then...nothing." Rachel's thick New York color was like a breath of subways and blintzes and sunrises through tall, mirrored buildings, and Starsky drank it in.

"I get a call on a _Sunday_ , not a Friday, and you tell me about Ken, and you tell me about the nurses, and you tell me you were hurt but you're okay. But nothing about Clare. And another week goes by, and there are other ladies' names but...no Clare. And I think...has this Clare disappeared from the planet?"

Starsky was fighting the smile again. Long ago he'd realized he shouldn't underestimate his mother and her innate knowledge of her sons.

"And then I come and I find you trailing after your Kenneth like a lost puppy, not walking by his side like the partners that you are. The way you would trail after your brother when he got in a fight, or fell and scraped his knee, and you thought it was your fault."

Starsky stopped walking and guided his mother to a bench just off the path. They sat together, Starsky's hand holding his mother's where it rested near the surgical scars, hidden under his jeans.

"Clare…" Starsky sighed. "Might have been a lovely girl...if she'd been real. But she was a figment of another, hurt little girl's imagination. Someone exciting and independent and fun that I'm sure this hurt little girl wished she could be." Starsky's thumb stroked against his mother's hand, and he watched the frailing skin smooth and wrinkle again. "I believed in Clare, Ma, and it landed my partner in the hospital...hurt worse than he's been...maybe ever before."

Rachel was silent for a moment, her shining hazel eyes studying the sea, the way she did every night in New York. "What did Clare do to you, David?"

Starsky's eyes met hers for a second then went to his shoes, a move he hadn't done in a very long time.

"And don't lie to me, young man." Rachel said, slowly and intentionally and her son's face brightened briefly with a wide smile.

The smile lost its vibrancy and eventually disappeared and Starsky stared out at the sea. "Hutch and I...we know so many people...all of them have had their trust broken a hundred times by other cops, by family members, by other crooks. Hutch and I...we know it. We try to stand by our word." Starsky's free hand was playing with a small pile of sand that some kid had dumped on the bench. He picked up a pinch of grains and watched them roll off the pads of his thumb and forefinger. "I thought Clare trusted me, and I trusted her in a way…and then she turned on me."

Instantly an image flashed into Starsky's mind of the scars on Clare's elbow. He'd never said anything about them to her, but she'd felt his fingers brushing over them. Whatever she had read in his face in that split second of recognition…"Maybe I did something that made her think I was turning against her."

Starsky sighed and brushed the pile of sand from the bench in one move, then wiped his hand on his jeans. "I suppose the point is...if I hadn't done whatever I did...she wouldn't have turned on us. We might still be undercover at that library. Hutch would still have both his kidneys. I wouldn't have this limp."

"You wouldn't have a lovely girl named Stacey. You wouldn't have your mother here with you, enjoying the warm breeze and the ocean and sunset. You wouldn't have shown a miracle to all those doctors and nurses in that hospital. The miracle of real love." Rachel said, her eyes beaming with the pride she felt for her oldest boy.

Starsky had the grace to blush slightly and gave his mother a sheepish look.

"Why did you wipe the sand away?"

"Hmm?"

"The sand. Why did you wipe it away?"

"It doesn't belong there." Starsky muttered, giving his mother a strange look.

"How do you know it doesn't belong there?"

Starsky could feel it coming, but he decided to play along. "Because the bench is for a _tuches_ , the beach is for the sand."

He got a slap on the arm for his choice of words, but his mother was fighting a grin. The Starsky grin. "Do you think the person who put the sand there, will be upset that it is gone now?"

"Sure." Starsky said.

"But do you think the person who needs to sit on a bench where there is no sand, will be grateful?"

Starsky smiled softly and said nothing.

Rachel reached up and patted her boy's stubble covered cheek, and kept her hand there. "Your father learned this lesson, early on. No matter what you do in the situations you find yourself in, someone will always see it as a betrayal. Be true to yourself, David. Be true to your partner. I helped to raise a good boy. If your mother can trust your judgement, you can too, hmm?"

Starsky gently folded his mother into a hug, suddenly aware of the mire that had been around him. Aware of some of it slipping away.

When Rachel leaned back she studied his eyes and nodded to herself, then she squeezed her son's leg, oblivious of the brief wince of pain it produced and said, "Now. You have no food in your icebox."

"I have no food in my icebox." Starsky parroted quietly, certain his mother was right.

"I'm going to cook you dinner."

"You're going to cook me dinner." Starsky grinned, his stomach instantly growling at the mere mention of his mother's cooking.

"We will go shopping."

"Shopping."

"You will do laundry."

"Laundry."

"Then we will have a glass of wine, and you will give me the Friday night phone call that you skipped."

"I had a concussion."

" _You_ can have two glasses of wine." Rachel said and Starsky laughed.

* * *

Two weeks after Rachel Starsky and Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson had returned home, Starsky and Hutch were called into Captain Dobey's office.

"What are you working on?" Dobey asked without preamble, waiting for Hutch to make it through the door and perch on the stool that now lived in Dobey's office for just that purpose.

"Odds and ends." Starsky muttered, eyes buried still in the clutch of papers that he'd brought into Dobey's office with him. "Tryin' to get a receipt for that phone call Hutch made to Indiana from my apartment, but I can't find it on the phone bill."

"I just got a call from Bellevue."

Hutch responded immediately with a, "Yeah?"

Starsky's head came up in a distracted nod, then the name sank in and he felt his heart jump.

"They found Clare Donovan dead this morning. She strangled herself with her sheets."

Starsky and Hutch met each other's shocked glances, before Hutch said, "She was on suicide watch, Captain. How can someone on suicide watch commit suicide?"

"That's for you to find out." Dobey said, then lifted a finger in warning. "But don't over do it. We're still on thin ground, and you're barely off bed rest, Hutch."

"They got beds at Bellevue." Hutch snapped angrily, eyeing his partner protectively. "I'm sure they'll be accommodating."

Starsky pushed his lips together then sighed. Back in the mire. Back into the _tsuris_. Not outta the woods yet, Ma, he thought.


	13. Chapter 13

Kline and Granger stopped them before they could get off the second floor. Kline had slapped a hand against his partner's chest, stopping Granger and pointing out the blond and brunet with a mocking smirk on his face.

"Dobey got the call, too, huh?" Kline asked, adjusting his coat collar like he'd just pulled it on.

Starsky and Hutch exchanged a glance.

"Yeah, and we're responding." Starsky said, hitting the down button on the elevator, determined to ignore the two vice cops.

"Responding?" Kline snorted, glancing to Granger. He caught the warning look but didn't heed it. "Looks more like you'll be the clean-up crew by the time you get there."

Granger shoved his partner toward the stairwell doors, casting a single glance toward the two homicide cops, before he followed Kline. The elevator arrived a minute later and Starsky caught the flush on Hutch's cheeks and the brief, apologetic look in his eyes. Starsky slapped the back of his hand against Hutch's arm.

"Hey…neither one of those guys lost a kidney then went back to work three weeks later."

Hutch gave him a weak smile stepping into the elevator and hitting the down button. Starsky was a little slow to follow and the door started to shut without him. At the last moment Starsky seemed to remember that they had places to go and slapped the edge door with his hands, pushing it back open.

Hutch watched Starsky stand in the doorway, his brow knitted, eyes aimed at where Granger and Kline had been standing moments before.

"What's the matter?"

"I was thinkin'."

"Dobey told you to take it easy, remember?"

Starsky didn't react to the jibe, his head still tilted to the side. "Kline and Granger said we walked into a trap."

Hutch pushed away from the elevator wall and walked back out of the car, glancing around the corner and down the empty hallway. "Just now?"

"No...in the hospital..." Starsky said, his voice lost in the puzzle forming in his head. When his blue eyes finally snapped to his partner's he pointed a finger. "After the accident, when we were waiting to hear about Kyle, we were standing in the hallway and Kline accused us of walking into a trap. He said it like he _knew_ Clare, knew how she operated. But...he'd never mentioned her before. Clare's name was never on any of the reports that Vice shared with us. So how could he have known?"

Hutch had leaned back against the wall by the elevator, pressing his perpetually sore back against the molding that stuck out at waist level. He crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Starsk...they were blowin' off steam. Spreading the blame around."

"Nah…" Starsky shook his head. "Not spreading...redirecting. Another thing that's been bothering me...who told Simonetti and Dryden about the pictures in the camera?"

"Youngman, in evidence lockup."

"No…" Starsky shook his head. "I talked to him after the hearing when I went to get my personal effects back. He said he'd left the photos locked up after he developed 'em. He'd tried to call Dobey but couldn't reach him and wanted to sit on the photos until he could talk to the captain. He didn't even think to check if they were gone until IA started pokin' around. By then IA had already confiscated the pictures."

Hutch's eyes narrowed. "So someone, who knew _what_ the pictures were of... _before_ they were developed, told Simonetti and Dryden?"

"Clare knew. And the man who took the pictures knew." Starsky said.

"That's a big accusation." Hutch said, dropping his volume.

"Kline and Granger have been weird about this whole case. Disappearing conveniently right before we finally connect Clare with a drug ring. And where were they on Saturday? I sat in that GTO a long time, Hutch. They were supposed to have been watching the library. They had a description of the green sedan. How did it get by them?"

"Ok…" Hutch put up a hand, stalling the slew of conspiracy theories. "Maybe there's a connection...maybe they're involved. What kind of evidence could we hope to find three weeks later?"

"What are the two things they needed to make those photos convincing?"

"The ring. And a wig."

"That's right. A ring identical to the one I have." Starsky lifted his left hand, the ring right where it always sat. "One thing I can tell you about this ring, Hutch, it's a one of a kind."

"So...he-"

"Whoever "he" is…"

"-either took your ring. Or made a copy." Hutch said.

"Are you saying we should be talking to jewelry stores?"

"Maybe."

"You know we never found a current address for Clare." Starsky said.

"You ever follow up on that hunch about the university?"

"Hutch…" Starsky shook his head, his eyes drifting away. "She wasn't a student. She spent all day at the library."

Hutch touched Starsky's chest, two fingertips resting against Starsky's shirt, drawing his partner's attention back. "That's right. Days. What if she _was_ a student. What if...what if some part of her was trying to get out of the mess of her life? What if she was taking night classes?"

The pained, doubtful expression Starsky was giving him didn't change much. "How do you feel about splittin' up once we're done at Bellevue?"

For a second both partners wore the same reluctant expression. "If we're right about Kline and Granger we're running outta time." Hutch said.

"Should we pull Dobey in?"

"Are we that sure?" Hutch asked, his eyebrows climbing.

"Ok…" Starsky said with a sigh. "We hit Bellevue, then we split up. You want the university or the jewelers?"

* * *

Bellevue was surprised to see them.

"When did Vice start sending back-up on a suicide call?" The orderly demanded, grudgingly dragging cops down to the morgue for the second time.

"We're not vice...what was your name again?" Starsky asked irritated, already chafing being back in Bellevue.

"Cotter. Your buddies were here. The smoker, and the other guy."

"Smok-"

"Kline." Hutch said, giving his partner a look.

"Had to leave early for a smoke break. I figure he's got a weak stomach." Cotter said, then opened the door to the morgue and walked straight to an unmarked drawer, yanking it open with a bang. A body lay on the long drawer, under a sheet. The body and the drawer jumped and vibrated with the careless nature of Cotter's approach.

Starsky searched the drawer then asked, "Where are her personal effects?"

"Up in the office. We gotta contact next of kin for those."

"This woman is in custody. Our custody. We're next of kin." Hutch said, lifting the sheet a little. He caught a flash of bluish-purple skin and decided to leave the sheet in place for the moment.

"You know that's what Kline and that other guy said. Cops." Cotter shook his head. "All the same broken record."

"What'd you tell them?" Starsky asked.

"Same thing I'm gonna tell you. Get us a warrant, we'll turn the stuff over. There's nothin' there. A big dictionary, the typewriter, some stuff she was writin'. You know the reason they checked on her when they did was cause she wasn't typin' anymore. Tappity-tap-tap all day and most of the night."

"She was on suicide watch!" Starsky barked, sounding remarkably like his captain.

Cotter's attitude changed instantly, his back stiffening. "I'm just an orderly." He said, then tried to leave.

"Hey, wait a minute...can you get a doctor down here? Somebody with some knowledge of her case?" Hutch asked.

Cotter gave a funny laugh then covered it, pretending to wipe his nose with a hand and said, "Yeah, sure. I'll get right on that." As he was pushing through the morgue door, Cotter called, "Lock 'er up when you're done boys."

Hutch narrowed his eyes at the receding flash of white through the morgue door window. "That guy here when you were here?"

Starsky stood at the head of the drawer and braced himself before he pulled the sheet up and away. "Probably. I was so messed up once they cut off the pain meds I couldn't tell ya."

It was Clare. There was no question. Her suicide hadn't been violent. But for the discoloration around her neck and face, she might have been described as peaceful. Starsky moved to the side of the drawer and lifted the sheet from her arm. The old tracks were there, but none of them looked new.

"Why would Kline and Granger come down here?" Starsky asked.

"Supposing Kline or Granger were working with Clare, either with the drugs or to set you up-"

"Set _us_ up."

Hutch pointed a finger and nodded. "She's a witness that might turn against them. It's to their benefit to know if she's really dead."

"Yeah...maybe. We weren't that far behind them though. We would'a seen them in the halls or in the parking lot. Where did they go in such a hurry that we missed them?"

"I'd like to know how many times they've been here."

"For the first time in our careers we got more leads, then we got people, Hutch."

"We got people." Hutch said, smirking and raising a brow.

Starsky smirked then said, "Try not to get institutionalized while I'm gone."

Hutch flashed him a grin, then turned back to Clare. The door of the morgue closed again behind him and he pulled the sheet away from Clare's right arm as well, running his thumb over the faded scars there. He had his own set, he knew what needle marks looked like years after they'd healed. Clare had been using something, on and off, for years, but not with the frequency of a true drug addict.

He found a pair of gloves, took a bracing breath then pushed back Clare's lips to look at her teeth. No caps, healthy white, if showing the wear of grinding in the back. Her gums were the deep blue of an asphyxiation victim but they had been healthy before.

If it wasn't a barbiturate in her veins, what was it?

With how transient Clare's life had been there was no hope of looking at medical records, but one unsung fact about the miracle of organ donation was sticking with Hutch. The line of pill bottles that had stood like centurions on his dresser drawer was dwindling down to two or three. There was one pill bottle, though, that would sit on his dresser for the rest of his life. It was a maintenance drug that would keep his body from rejecting the foreign matter now molded to his person.

The words "for the rest of your life" had been haunting him since he'd heard it and he was slowly getting accustomed to the idea. He wondered if Clare had had a "rest of your life" hanging over her head, and chose to cut short the headache of constant minding.

"Detective Hutchison?"

Hutch jolted and winced, then braced himself on the drawer and looked up at the doctor standing in the doorway. The man was in his late sixties, his face a flat square of wrinkles and worry lines with gaps for mouth, nose and eyes. He wore glasses that narrowed toward his nose, his hair thinning and a little wild.

"I'm Doctor Atwell. Your partner told me you had some questions concerning Ms. Donovan."

Two things struck Hutch as strange about the doctor. The first was his pronounced lisp. It wasn't something he'd expected to hear from a man so advanced in years, or educated enough to have the PhD on his name tag. The second was his personal approach. He hadn't called Clare by her diagnosis or her position as a patient. He'd used her name. Something unheard of in a place with a reputation like Bellevue. A reputation that he had a unique perspective of.

"I take it Cotter wasn't able to find you?"

"Cotter? Oh...the orderly. Cotter should probably be admitted, Detective Hutchinson, but it isn't up to me to chose the patients, only the treatments. How can I help you?"

"Will you be performing an autopsy?"

"Cause of death isn't in question, and I'm not a coroner. Ms. Donovan's remains were scheduled to be transferred to the county coroner this evening. We're still trying to contact her next of kin."

Hutch nodded. "My partner and I will be collecting her personal effects as soon as we get a warrant. Have you met a Detective Kline or Granger?"

"They've visited several times. Detective Kline, especially, seemed to have a personal relationship with Ms. Donovan." Atwell said, still maintaining a two or three foot distance from the body.

Hutch glanced down at the girl then covered her face again and slid the drawer back into place.

"How do you mean personal?"

"He was excessively gruff with Ms. Donovan." Atwell said, his tone becoming academic. "Intentionally chauvinistic and crude, but only in reference to her. Usually that kind of verbal vendetta comes from an affection, or lust, for someone that he either detests or has been taught that he should detest."

"Kline loved her, but she was a criminal, so he couldn't love her?"

Atwell moved toward the door, gesturing for Hutch to follow him. "That's a blanket generalization, but yes."

In the hallway Hutch tried to put some distance between himself and the wall. He'd left his cane in the car for the first time in weeks that day, not expecting to spend so much time on his feet, and was now regretting it.

"The needle marks on her arm...were there any blood tests done when Ms. Donovan was admitted?"

Atwell nodded, took in a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. "Per new FDA regulations all patients who may be prescribed psychiatric medication during a hospital stay must first have blood drawn to determine drug interactions."

"What did you find?"

"Ms. Donovan may have been taking amphetamines."

"Regularly?"

Atwell shrugged. "Once a week. Frequently enough to keep her awake for a day or two, then she would come down. We were concerned about the damage to her heart and the stress that the pregnancy would eventually cause."

Hutch's eyes widened and Atwell studied him then nodded. "We kept Kline and Granger updated on Ms. Donovan, presuming that the information was going from them to your Captain Dobey. I see we made a mistake."

"How far along was she?"

"About a month."

Hutch was silent for a moment, digesting the information. "You're certain it was a suicide. No one could have…helped?"

"Ms. Donovan was suicidal. I approved the suicide watch because I felt it was warranted. If anyone helped, it was by neglecting to check on her."

"I'll need a list, Doctor, of all the people assigned to her. Any personnel that might have had contact."

Atwell nodded after a moment of thought. "That can be arranged."

"I don't have a warrant, but I'm running on a schedule. Could you give me access to her personal effects. You can stand in the room and watch me if you need to."

"I can authorize it. And I think I will join you, but perhaps out of morbid curiosity, more so than legal need." Atwell said, then gave Hutch a look. "Are you feeling unwell, detective?"

"Uh…" Hutch said, clearing his throat. "It's a long story...but can I borrow a cane?"

Atwell raised a bushy brow, but pursed his lips and nodded.

* * *

Before he'd left Bellevue Starsky had made a call.

"Starsky, I hate to point out an obvious fact but I am in the middle of lunch trade. It is the hour that most hungry folk like to spend hard earned cash for well-done steak and I'm light a waitress."

"You're always light a waitress, Hug. The wait time is part of the charm."

"Ha! Why do you want me to go jewelry shopping for?"

Starsky glanced up at the nurse hovering near the phone. She had her nose buried in a chart, but he was sure she was listening in. She had the curious look about her. "It has to do with a couple of Vice-friends of ours."

"K&G, huh? The white knights of the white lines."

"Somethin' like that. Hutch and me are workin' on a hunch, but we don't got time to canvas every jewelry maker in town."

"I just tol' you I got a crib full of customers." Huggy protested, then smothered the phone with a hand and started shouting orders at what Starsky presumed was a cook.

"Huggy all it takes is a dime and a five minute phone call. Get the word out that the cops know somebody copied a ring...uh sterling silver, man's pinky ring. The ring is the key piece of evidence in a case, and the cops will give a big reward to anybody who comes forward and admits to making the copy. But they gotta show us the mold."

"You want mold, you want a ring. You givin' up cash for it."

" _The_ mold..a jewelers mold. Not the stuff they get penicillin from."

There was heavy sigh on the other end of the line and Huggy said, "Keep underestimatin' me and you'll be minus a lunch counter, Starsky."

Starsky grinned. "Knew I could count on you, pal."

Huggy snorted. "When are you and Hutch gonna join me for that drink?"

"You make Hutch's drink a Shirley Temple and we'll see you Friday night."

"Aw...poor Hutch." Huggy said, sarcastically, with a hint of actual sympathy for the blonde. "Huey! More fries, less flies, move it!"

"Talk to you later, Hug." Starsky said then hung up. The nurse at the desk gave him a fishy look and Starsky waved her off before he headed toward the front entrance.

He noticed Hutch's cane leaning against the seat before he released the parking brake and took the time to walk the cane back into the hospital, letting the nurse know who it belonged to. He figured "tall, pale, blonde with a funny limp and an arm cast" would be descriptive enough.

He and Hutch's squash were on the road, a call in to dispatch asking to be connected to Dobey when the response came back that Dobey wasn't available. Starsky thought he might have recognized the male operator's voice, or at least the obstinate refusal in his tone, but he let it go. He left a message for Dobey to call him back when he could and told dispatch where he was headed.

He'd expected that Dobey would've called back by the time he got to the university but the radio had remained stubbornly silent. Starsky parked the car a few blocks from the registrar office and got out of the seat with his weight on his good leg, before he set his left foot down, shifted his weight gently, then started to walk. It was a habit now. Making sure his knee was going to support his weight before he took a full stride. There was a new, faint click when he was climbing stairs, too, that he wondered if anyone else could hear.

He'd have to ask Hutch the next time he and his partner actually climbed a staircase together.

"Clare Donovan." Starsky said, spelling the last name after the student assistant had drooled over his badge. "She might have been taking night classes. In writing maybe, or...writing."

The student had stepped away from a typewriter, the roller so messy with ink that the back of the page he was working on was streaked with a marble pattern. Starsky shook his head, imagining the fit Dobey would have if every one of his reports left ink on Dobey's fingers, desktop, blotter...he'd be on traffic duty for life.

"We got a Donovan." The kid said, after a minute more of hunting. "First name Clare...middle name, Julie."

The folder was plopped down on the counter in front of him and Starsky blinked at the fingerprint smudges the kid had left, then opened the folder with just the tips of his pinkies.

The first thing he learned was that Clare had been an A student. She'd been taking three classes, all scheduled after 6pm, three days a week.

Starsky started to ask for a piece of paper and a pencil, then thought better of it and reached over the counter grabbing them for himself. The kid hardly seemed to notice, turning back to the typewriter and punching the keys with the hunt and peck method.

Starsky wrote down "Intro to Writing, Modern American Literature, and Shakespeare 101." He jotted down the room numbers, class times, professor's names and the grades Clare had been earning in each.

"What about her address?"

"Oh...that's in another file."

The student stood up and took two steps toward a different filing cabinet then turned back and snapped his fingers. "I thought I recognized the name. Your buddies already got the address...and…" The kid turned in a full circle, patting the pockets of his cardigan before he searched the long, paper strewn desk in front of him. There were smudges of ink everywhere his hands had been.

"They took it with them." The kid said, then smiled helpfully. "Anything else, Officer?"

Starsky blinked, not sure if he should laugh or cry. "Do you remember offhand where she lived?"

"Nope."

Starsky settled his chin in his hand, and chewed on the pinky finger that strayed too close this mouth while he asked, "Do you keep duplicate records?" He felt like the vein near his forehead might explode with the blank look the kid was giving him. This was the future, he told himself, worse still, the well-educated future.

"Yeah! Um…yeah." There was another flurry of hunting before the kid upturned the trash can and hunted through a mountain of crumpled carbon paper. When he found one he recognized the kid smoothed it out, spreading more ink on his hands, and handed it over to Starsky.

Starsky stared at the mush of words and letters covering the used and reused carbon before he caught a D-O-N close together. He managed to get the street number and the last two digits of the house number, but the rest was a dizzying mess.

"Anything else?" The kid asked eagerly, still standing in the foot deep pile of carbon paper.

"Uh...you've got a smudge...on your…"

"Hmm?"

"Nevermind."


	14. Chapter 14

"Dispatch, this is Zebra 3."

"Zebra 3, this is Dobey."

"Hey, Cap...I'm leaving the university and heading to a house on College Street. Somewhere in the 300 block."

The radio blipped at him, sounding very much like a crossed line, before Dobey came back. "You want to tell me why you've been following Kline and Granger around all afternoon?"

Starsky stared at the radio for a moment then heard a horn behind, realized the light had changed and pulled forward. "Captain, _you_ sent Hutch and I out to Bellevue yourself."

"That's a lie, Starsky, and you know it."

The brunet was trying to remember where in the warren of one way streets and narrow, brick lined alleys, College Street was. The conflict of what Dobey was saying, and what Dobey might have been meaning, made it all the harder. Starsky was halfway down a one-way street before he realized he was going the wrong way and pulled the LTD out of the path of a water delivery truck.

He felt the breeze of the truck as it passed, despite the fact that the windows were closed, and anger spiked with the adrenaline. He'd keyed the radio and was about to respond unwisely when he spotted the green sign at the end of the street that said College in white type. Starsky checked his rear view mirrors, then replaced the mic and pulled out onto the one way.

He'd stopped at the corner and glanced left, spotting Kline's blue sedan instantly, the trunk open. The driver's side door was open too, blocking half the narrow street, and a blue-panted leg was visible, propped against it, a hand and a smoking cigarette resting on the thigh. Kline...smoking and waiting.

With the trunk up, Starsky couldn't tell if Granger was in the car with him or not. With the door open the angle of the mirror might prevent Kline from seeing the brown and tan Galaxie. Starsky turned right and stormed down the block as fast as he could before making a full circle and parking on the one-way cross-street, on Clare's block, going the right way this time.

He'd pulled up even with a narrow alley running between the two lines of residential buildings that formed the block. But for a few chain link fences it looked like a good way to get to Clare's building without being seen by either of the vice cops.

Starsky checked his on-duty gun, not sure why he'd felt the need to, and not willing to think about actually having to use it. He keyed the radio then said, "Zebra Three to central."

The same careless voice that he'd recognized thirty-minutes ago, answered. Before Starsky could respond he was hit with the memory he'd been struggling to recall. The dispatcher was the same guy who'd been working the Sunday Hutch was attacked.

Starsky waited long enough for Central Dispatching to call again, then pursed his lips, doubting he'd get a successful response to his request. "Patch me through to Dobey."

"Uh...hang on." The voice said, and Starsky rolled his eyes then smirked when the voice added, "Over."

"Dobey here."

"Are we clear?"

Dobey sighed, the sound loud enough to key the mic and transfer. "Sorry about the static. One of those two in vice complained to Dryden and Simonetti. Both IA guys were in here making waves."

"That's part of why I'm about to do what I'm about to do, Cap. Long story short, Hutch and I think Kline or Granger, or both, were the ones to set Dryden and Simonetti on to the photographs."

It took Dobey a minute to respond. "That may have been my fault. I was hounding them to share their reports, and communicate...I invited them to look at the evidence you and Hutch had collected."

"Captain, according to Youngman, the photos were never entered into evidence until Simonetti and Dryden had them in their greedy little hands. If Kline or Granger knew what was on the photos, they knew it before the camera even got to Youngman."

Starsky could imagine Dobey chewing on the information, grinding his teeth before he said, "I see."

"Hutch is at Bellevue talking to the doctor assigned to Clare. We haven't been _following_ Kline and Granger. _They've_ been everywhere _we've_ gone. I just drove by Kline's sedan. They're at Clare's apartment...and the trunk is open."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I've got Huggy working on another angle." Starsky paused, thinking, then smirked and said, "How about sending a black and white to make a traffic stop in a few minutes?"

Dobey snorted then said, "What's the reasonable suspicion?"

"Busted tail light." Starsky said, then pulled Hutch's clunker back onto the street. He sat at the corner long enough to establish that the sedan was still there. The trunk was closed and neither of the cops were in the car.

Starsky pulled the squash onto College, cruising at a sedate speed and scanning the building fronts and sidewalks. No sign of either of the vice cops, or anyone likely to serve as a witness to the 'accident' Starsky was about to have. He hit the accelerator and side-swiped the blue sedan hard, completely removing the left-side tail light and jamming the corner of the trunk for good measure.

He was sure the damage to Hutch's car would be minimal at best, and was deciding how he was going to butter his partner up when he turned the corner and rounded the block again. He parked the car in the same spot as before and got out, scanning the street.

He was halfway to Clare's back door when the black and white _wooped_ its siren. Before he hopped the fence that separated Clare's back stoop from the neighbor's Starsky watched one of the uniforms in the black and white step out of the car and approach the blue sedan. He waited until Kline appeared, attracted by the cop car or the siren or maybe even the noise of the crash.

Starsky didn't want to risk waiting too long. He decided it was possible that Granger hadn't gone with Kline to the apartment, and hopped the fence, approaching the back door with his gun drawn.

The window was smeared with dust and cobwebs, and drapes hung on the inside of the window obscuring his view all the more. The tiny wedge of clear glass that he could see through showed a darkened kitchen with twenty-year-old wallpaper and a laminate and chrome table shoved in the corner of the room.

Starsky tried the doorknob, pressed his shoulder against the jamb then leaned. The door was flimsy but the lock had been reinforced. Starsky looked at the hinges next, and managed to get his pocket knife blade between the door and the jamb, using the point to jimmy the pin out of the top hinge. The pin on the bottom hinge slipped loose a centimeter then stuck fast. Starsky braced the door with one hand and hammered the pin with the butt of his gun against the heel of the knife. Flakes of rust came away on the point of his knife but the pin slid free.

The slide lock holding the door in place bent back with a squeal as Starsky forced the door free of the hinges. The curtains fluttered, suddenly exposed to a breeze, and the door propped easily, cockeyed in its frame. Starsky stepped into the empty kitchen and scanned the clean counter-tops. There was a door probably leading to the basement, and an archway leading into the next room.

The space under the basement door was black against the dim light in the kitchen. Starsky ignored it and stepped quietly into the sitting room.

There were pictures everywhere. Photographs, paintings, newspaper clippings. Some were of Hutch, but most were of Starsky. Or male models or actors that looked like Starsky, whose photos had been cut out of magazines. Starsk felt his heart rate triple and couldn't catch his breath, overwhelmed by almost three full walls of Clare's obsession.

There wasn't just one wig. There were three. Each of varying length, each a mass of tight, course curls the exact color of Starsky's hair. Starsky checked the doorways leading out of the sitting room and listened. The house was empty and quiet, quiet enough that he could still hear Kline arguing with the uniforms outside.

Starsky holstered his gun and stepped around the perimeter of the room, silently studying the walls the way a patron perused a museum. He wasn't sure if he was flattered or disgusted, terrified or intrigued. Or all of those things and more. The closer he looked the more he realized that he hadn't been the sole focus of Clare's decor. There were some newspaper clippings from Columbus, Indiana. Recent clippings that Clare must have paid a pretty penny to get shipped to Bay City.

The Columbus Herald articles that were old enough to have been from her past dealt only with the search for the missing John Donotelli. There was nothing about Frita, Matt Rode, or Julie Donotelli.

As he got closer to the wigs, mounted on plaster mannequin heads, Starsky noticed a porcelain hand hiding behind them. The hand was open, fingers splayed and stretching upward, obviously created to be a place to store rings.

Every finger of the hand had a pinky ring on it, identical to the one Starsky wore. Some were of better quality than others. One of them was much smaller than the rest.

"She was one sick chick." Granger said from behind him. Starsky went for his weapon as he spun but Granger already had his pulled, pointed at Starsky's feet. "I think Vern liked her cause she was as sick as he is."

Granger had always been the quiet type. Starsky shouldn't have been surprised that Vernon Kline's partner had managed to sneak up on him in the dead silence of the "shrine". Starsky eyed the gun, then met Granger's gaze. The look he got, told him Granger knew he was pointing his weapon at a fellow officer, he just hadn't decided yet how he was going to use it. The presence of the black and white out front was the only thing keeping Granger from making a stupid mistake. Starsky prayed the uniforms were tenacious rookies looking to make their first bust.

"Kline took the photos." Starsky said, figuring the cat was already out of the bag if Granger was holding a gun on him. Even if the gun was pointed at the rough floorboards.

Granger swallowed, wincing as if in pain. "I think he enjoyed it. They were...giggling in the car. I think they'd played that game before."

"Game?"

Granger looked pointedly at the wigs, the rings, the "Starsky" wallpaper. "Clare had her likes and dislikes...Kline played along as long as he got what he was after."

Starsky studied the uncertain man before him, wishing he'd paid more attention to the vice pair. They'd made it clear from the beginning that they weren't happy about being hooked up with Starsky and Hutch, but he and the blintz had figured it was interdepartmental squabbling at the root of the disagreement.

"Why'd you go along with it?" Starsky asked, leaning back against the counter that held the wigs, letting his left hand slip behind his back.

Granger tilted his head. In the dim light of the room Starsky wasn't sure if it was because his left hand had disappeared or if Granger was pondering the question. "If it were you and Hutch...if you thought Clare was a fad that Hutch would get over if you left it alone long enough. If you found out you were wrong, and you were too late to drive her away and Hutch was gonna bust up both your lives because of a twisted little bitch with a cop fetish...what would you do?"

Starsky's first reaction was that it would never have happened. Then he remembered a part of their past that both had tried to forget. A fight over a single woman. A woman who had figured out the thin line women weren't supposed to cross, but men crossed all the time. The events that had shortly followed that rift had easily buried the memory under a thousand more, but it had still happened.

"I would'a had a problem with two fellow cops put in the hospital because of my partner." Starsky snapped, and Granger nodded.

"I wouldn't'a let my partner frame an innocent cop."

Granger's face flushed and his jaw tightened. "You ain't innocent," he whispered softly, and the gun came up a little higher.

"I didn't rape Clare." Starsky bit out.

Granger blinked, then said, "No...but you didn't help her much either. You busted that fagan, spent two days typing up reports then you breezed on to the next big case. You didn't spend weeks cleaning up the pieces, like Vern and me."

"What pieces? What are you talkin' about?"

Something shifted in Granger's head. He'd begun to hunch his whole body around the gun, but a switch was flipped and he straightened. He took a deep breath through his nose and said, "What do you think the money from the stolen property was being used for, Starsky?"

Starsky blinked but he got it. Granger was right to a degree. He hadn't had to think about where the money was going because they'd been after the kid that had shot Hutch. They'd been out to stop only one part of the process. Not all of it.

Granger nodded, watching him get it. "Once the charges were conferred, the case came to us and we had to drag through each of those kid's lives. We had to interview them, sometimes one of us holdin' the kid down in the chair because he was so wired comin' down from the stuff Bruce kept them hooked on. Clare was on uppers, but she'd been smart about it. She'd learned how to fake a full dose while Bruce was watching. How to fake the signs. One talented actress, that Clare. She played the tarnished innocent in front of Kline so many times he believed her. Offered to put her up after she turned 18. She wound him in like he was a carp. They'd slept together half a dozen times before I found out. Go ahead and ask me again, Starsky. Ask me why I went along with it?"

Granger had started to use the gun to emphasize his points and Starsky found himself constantly distracted by it. He couldn't tell if Granger was angry or excited, ready to pull the trigger or ready to put the gun away. Granger was a blank book compared to most of the cops on the force. This was the most he'd ever gotten out of the man.

"It don't matter why, Joe." Kline said from behind his partner. Starsky felt his heart sink. He hadn't been paying attention to the commotion outside, Granger's gun waving too much of a distraction. "Clare's gone."

Kline might have been upset about that. He might have been a little excited about it. The room was dim, and Kline's face hidden by the glare of sunlight coming from the front hall. "Let's finish up and get outta here."

"What about him?" Granger asked.

"What _about_ him? Shoot him. Knock him out. Pin him to the wall for all I care."

"Are you stupid? He's a cop! He's got a partner. We can't possibly cover that up."

"What's to cover!?" Kline shouted impatiently. "We're leaving town, Joe! Use your cuffs, chain him to the kitchen sink. Let's go!"

Starsky had the porcelain hand clutched by the fingers. It was the only thing he'd been able to reach. He remembered seeing a kerosene lamp behind it but he couldn't get his arm back that far without leaning or shifting. The hand would have to do.

He shifted to his right, threw the hand at Granger's face and went for his gun in quick succession. Granger's automatic barked before Starsky could bring his gun to bare. Once he had it out he threw a shot at Granger, then forced his knee into the first action it'd seen in three weeks.

He did alright, all things considered, until his desperate dive into the dark room just off the sitting room turned up a bed where he didn't expect a bed to be. It was a four poster job with a wooden box for a base. His last minute attempt at diving over the bed fell short when his knee impacted the wooden side. It hurt, pulling a cry from him that might have convinced Granger that he'd been hit.

Starsky got up on his good leg, crawled over the bed and flopped onto the floor just as feathers, bits of bedding and pillows started to fly. Kline and Granger had lost their minds. Maybe they were on something. Maybe Granger had been the only sane one of the pair and letting things go as far as they had, had broken him. The two stood in the doorway to the bedroom, blindly unloading their clips until the bed, the banisters and the wall behind it was swiss cheese.

Starsky lay as still as he could in the corner of the room. Pretty sure he was scared, but too terrified be positive. Something fell, a picture from the wall that no longer had wall to hang from and Starsky jumped, but kept his mouth pressed shut, listening.

One of them worked the slide of his gun and the last spent shell clattered to the floor. He heard the distinct sounds of an empty clip being ejected, a full clip sliding back in. Then a single shot that made him jolt against the wall. For a very long time Starsky was thought he'd stopped breathing. Belatedly it occurred to him that he might have just been shot, and he looked down at his own chest, seeing no blood.

There was no pain either, but for the throbbing in his knee. A body slid down the side of a wall then crumpled to the floor and Starsky remembered thinking about getting up, then suddenly being on his feet, gun pointed at Granger. Starsky's lurch upright was as unexpected for the silent partner as it was for Starsky, and it took Granger a second to point his gun.

Wide eyed and panting Starsky stuttered, "You shot him?"

Granger didn't respond at first, pulling a shaky wet breath in through his nose. Starsky watched the gun in Granger's hand vibrate. "Yeah...I shot him. Killed him. I'm a cop killer. I'm armed. You gotta shoot me to save your own life, Starsky."

"I can't...can't do that, Joe." Starsky gasped.

Granger's gun went off, a shot that surprised them both. It shattered the mirror on the vanity to Starsky's right. The flash from the barrel left a floating, green specter in the corner of Starsky's vision that no amount of blinking would make go away.

"Be a dirty cop...just this once Starsky. Huh?" Granger was crying, begging. "Make the wrong decision. Get a little revenge. Take the shot."

"Why?" Starsky demanded, unable to force the question out any louder than a whisper.

Granger pulled the trigger again and Starsky felt a tug at his right sleeve. A second later his arm started to burn and he looked down at the soft glisten of blood through a tear in his jacket sleeve. The pain came to him a second later, fierce and unrelenting. In an instant all the fear turned to anger and Starsky very much wanted to pull the trigger. It took every part of his concentration to get back on track. "I asked you a question."

"What question?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you let it go this far!?" Starsky screamed.

Granger's gun slid down to his side and his attention turned to his partner. He stared at Kline's body like he'd forgotten it was there. Like it was a mess he'd forgotten to finish cleaning up, and it'd begun to rot in his absence.

"It went too far before I realized it had begun." Granger said.

"Drop the gun, Joe." Starsky said, and for a long moment he thought Granger just might. Then they both looked up when the voice spoke over a megaphone.

"This is the police. We've had reports of shots fired. Come out of the building with your hands up."

Granger met his eyes and smiled oddly. "Clare would have appreciated the irony, Dave. A vice cop...killing his own partner, then committing suicide by cop."

"Granger, don't go out there. Don't do this." Starsky pleaded softly, trying to get around the bed before Granger could get out into the middle room. The moment he moved Starsky felt lightheaded. His knee was stiff and swelling and his arm was bleeding. He made it to the stairs about when Granger got to the front door.

"Hold it!" Starsky shouted, desperate, breathing hard through gritted teeth. "Those cops out there. They're kids. Rookies. Think about it, Joe. They shoot you 'cause they're keyed up and scared, then they find out you're one of them? What's that gonna do to their heads, huh?"

Starsky desperately clung to the train of thought that adrenaline and pain were threatening to derail. "W-when this case gets back to the kids in the academy...what are they gonna learn from it? Some cops are born bad and stay bad? How about…"when the goin' gets rough, quit"?"

Granger might not have been listening, but he wasn't going out that door so Starsky kept talking. "It's not a perfect system. There are gaps that kids like Clare can fall through. None of us are perfect. None of us are pretending to be. I'll stick by you, Joe. You hear me?"

Granger was staring out the slender lines of clear glass that framed the frosted glass window in the door.

"Me and Hutch...we will stand by you, but only if you let me take you in. Don't cheat the system, huh? Don't leave generations of police academy graduates with your name and Kline's name in the black book of dirty cops, with no idea of the good you did."

Granger turned his head toward Starsky, enough that he was framed in perfect profile against the door for a full minute.

"There's more to the story...a-and the kind of cops that we need on the streets, are the cops that hear it all. Start to finish. The cops that face the consequences and learn from their mistakes. That's the way we're gonna fix the system, Joe!"

The hand holding the gun came up and the heel of his hand rested against the wall by the door. Joe leaned into the hand like he didn't know there was a deadly weapon in it, his head hanging. "I hope you never end up where I am." Granger said, his voice thick and rough. "But if you do...I hope you're stronger."

The door was open before Starsky could scream for him to stay. Starsky's gun and the guns of the rookies outside on the street opened up in the same moment. Starsky's bullet got there first.


	15. Chapter 15

Finding a deserted spot on the beach on the evening of July 3rd was next to impossible, but Starsky had managed it.

"Hey." Hutch said, plopping down in the sand next to his partner.

"Hey." Starsky said, tipping the bottle in his hand toward his lips.

"You know it's illegal to drink on a public beach."

"Gonna arrest me?"

"I might just." Hutch said, pulling the bottle out of his partner's hand to look at the label. He sniffed at the neck of the bottle then handed it back. "You may break the law, but at least you have good taste."

Starsky gave a drunken snort and slurred, "Ma has good taste. She had me buy it when you were still in the hospital. I was supposed to open it when we celebrated the end of the case together."

"There wasn't really time for that was there?"

Starsky shook his head no, staring glassy eyed at the sea.

"With the depositions and the funerals and the hearings." Hutch said.

"Then Simonetti and Dryden and their pavlovic response to the shooting."

"Pavlovic response." Hutch said, duely impressed.

"Like that word?"

"Yeah."

"Stace taught it to me."

"Yeah, how's Stacey doing?"

"She's doin' fine. Without me."

"Can't say I blame her, Starsk." Hutch said. "You've been a bit of a boar lately."

"I'm not borin-"

"Boar, b-o-a-r."

"Oh."

"A pig."

"Ouch."

"A jerk."

"Aren't you supposed to be my pal?"

Hutch put his arm around his brother and felt Starsky's head fall to his shoulder.

"I feel like I'm turning into Joe Granger." The brunet finally said. "All I see are the cracks in the system anymore. All I see is the failures. It's depressing."

"Maybe we need to accept that that's how life is."

"Depressing and full of cracks?"

"Maybe."

"That's depressing."

"You said that already." Hutch said, smirking and taking the bottle back again. This time he set it in the sand out of Starsky's reach.

"I think that when you sober up, once you're past the hangover, you're going to remember all the good we've done over the years. So, I don't need to waste my time rolling out the golden carpet."

Starsky gave him a mildly perturbed look. "So glad you came over to cheer me up, partner."

"What I _will_ tell you...is that what you had to say in the courtroom today had a profound effect."

"What are you talkin' about?"

"Starsk, the last thing that judge, that jury, and those attorneys expected to hear was you asking for compassion to be shown to the man who shot you."

Starsky leaned his head out far enough to be able to see where Hutch had hidden the bottle, and leaned a little harder against his partner. "Not to mention what I said about Vernon Kline being responsible for just about everything else, or how we found out that Kline and Clare killed Pete and dressed up like me and pushed the car into the ocean, or that Kline paid Cotter to ignore Clare and that's why she committed suic-OW!"

"Quit interrupting."

"You pinched me."

"Are you gonna listen?"

Starsky pouted and cradled his once wounded, and now freshly pinched, arm against his chest, but stayed quiet.

"After the foreman read the jury's findings…" Hutch began again, voice soft and playful like a parent reading a picture book.

"And I stormed outta the courtroom…"

"Like a five-year-old." Hutch agreed. "The judge thanked the jury and the court and pounded his little gavel and then he invited me, and Dobey and DA McCallister and Officer Granger back into his chambers."

Starsky sat up a little straighter, still clutching his arm out of habit, and gave Hutch a confused look. "Why'd he do that?" He slurred.

"To talk about what a good point you made."

"About stress?"

"Yeah. About the pressure that's on cops these days to always make the morally right choice, despite the fact that we live in a morally ambiguous society. About the fact that cops are humans, just like soldiers coming home from war, dealing with more stress than the average person. And we might just need additional support instead of the threat of IA breathing down our necks when one of us cracks."

Hutch's eyes stayed fixed on his partner's, his arm still holding his brother up a little.

"That sounds like a big deal." Starsky said finally, and Hutch laughed.

"It is a big deal, Starsk. Like I said, it had an effect."

A tired, drunken smile curled at the corner of Starsky's mouth and Hutch pulled him back into the semi-hug.

When Starsky pulled away again it was to get to his knees then work his way to his feet. He'd taken his dress shoes and socks off before stepping out onto the sand. The rest of him, the blue dress slacks, pale green shirt, green and blue tie and dark blue blazer were coated with sand.

Hutch hadn't even bothered with his shoes, and knew he'd be vacuuming sand out of them for days. He held his hand up and Starsky pulled him to his feet in one slow, steady move that worked until Hutch was standing on his own. Starsky, over balanced, almost went back down again, then straightened and made a small effort to knock some of the sand off his clothes.

"Did the judge set the sentencing date for Joe?"

"Week from today." Hutch said, helping his partner with the de-sanding process.

"A week? Why so long?" Starsky asked, taking a few swipes at Hutch's sand covered backside.

"The judge wanted time to go through the information and the notes the jury made. He said he wanted to talk with IA, talk with Bellevue, even with Yvonne and some of the ladies from the library."

Starsky opened his mouth to ask a question then thought better of it, then opened his mouth anyway and said, "Not to look a gift horse in the mouth but...why does he care?"

"I don't know." Hutch shrugged, but he had a feeling that Starsky's frustrated speech in the courtroom had hit the nail on the head for an underlying problem that all of them had seen developing for years.

It was a problem that existed for judges, and lawyers, and doctors, and nurses, and soldiers and firemen, and a hundred other people in professions that asked them to spend their days as unfeeling, life-saving machines.

Except that they weren't. They were just as human and faulty as the people they were saving. Just as prone to break. Just as likely to fall.

Starsky braced himself with one hand on his partner's shoulder and watched the last of the setting sun settle on the distant horizon. "It's gonna take a while, though, to figure all that out?"

"Yeah. Maybe. But it had to start someplace. No better place than here."

"Hmm." Starsky said, then bent to pick up the bottle, eyeing the small amount of champagne left in the bottom. He walked the bottle to a trash can and threw it away, wiping sandy hands on sandy pants. Hutch joined him gradually, and stood by the bench where Starsky sat to pull his shoes and socks back on. Once he'd managed that Starsky sat staring at the last glow over the sea and said,

"Hutch...even though you wear funny clothes and you drive a squash, and you talk funny and your hair's always a mess...you're a good partner."

"Gee thanks, Starsk." Hutch said, smirking.

"No problem."

"Move over."

"Ok." Starsky said, and moved until Hutch had room to sit. "Did I tell you Clare sent me a letter?"

"What?"

Starsky sat forward and pulled a well worn piece of paper from his back pants pocket, unfolding it. The letter was typewritten and dated a few days before Clare's suicide.

"She didn't have my address so she sent it to the police station. It was buried under that pile of court documents until we took it all with us to the courthouse a couple days ago."

Starsky handed the letter to his partner.

Hutch squinted at it in the dark and began to read:

"Dear David,

I know it's strange to hear, but this is Julie speaking. I'm sorry for what Clare did to you. She's a wicked old witch sometimes and I don't much like her, but she keeps me safe. I really like you. I think you and Hutch are ok guys, for corny old people, anyway. Clare just found out she's gonna have a baby and I don't think she wants it. That means I'm going to go away forever and I felt like I had to tell someone. Since I don't really have any friends, I thought I'd tell you.

It may not seem like it, but you did a lot of good for me and Clare. Things were really good when Clare was taking her classes and doing homework. She was writing her book and was going to be a famous author and playwright. She was going to stop the other stuff and marry a cop and never be Clare again. I don't know who Clare would be, but she was thinking about it. And well, then the doctor told her about this baby. Because of me, Clare knew she couldn't be a mom, so she's gonna get rid of it.

You don't need to worry though. Clare and me have been so many people its like we've lived lots of lives. Clare knew she wouldn't make it for long. That's why she wrote so much, because if she could write it down and print it between covers, all the things she learned could be there for others to learn, only without all the hurt. Clare says I'm using running sentences and she's tired of me hogging the typewriter.

You're a good guy, Dave.

Your friend,

Julie Frita Donotelli"


End file.
